There many reasons NOT to trust google, and any products related to it, including gmail. Below is just a few news links.

And, Yes there are alternatives. See bottom of page. 

For your serious consideration:>

http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm

Google ‘aware of data scoop’

 Sydney Morning Herald
April 29, 2012

 SAN FRANCISCO: Google’s harvesting of emails, passwords and other sensitive personal information from unsuspecting households in Australia and around the world was neither a mistake nor the work of a rogue engineer, as the company long maintained, but a program that supervisors knew about, according to new details from the full text of a regulatory report.

The report, prepared by the US Federal Communications Commission after a 17-month investigation of Google’s Street View project, was released, heavily redacted, two weeks ago. Although it found that Google had not violated any laws, the agency said Google had obstructed the inquiry and fined the company $US25,000. On Saturday, Google released a version of the report with only employees’ names redacted.

 The full version [PDF/4.5MB] draws a portrait of a company where an engineer can easily embark on a project to gather personal emails and web searches of potentially hundreds of millions of people as part of his or her unscheduled work time, and where privacy concerns are shrugged off.

The payload data was secretly collected between 2007 and 2010 as part of Street View, a project to photograph streetscapes over much of the civilised world.

Google’s proposed Gmail service and the practices and policies of its business units raise significant and troubling questions.

First, Google has proposed scanning the text of all incoming emails for ad placement. The scanning of confidential email violates the implicit trust of an email service provider. Further, the unlimited period for data retention poses unnecessary risks of misuse.

Second, Google's overall data retention and correlation policies are problematic in their lack of clarity and broad scope. Google has not set specific, finite limits on how long it will retain user account, email, and transactional data. And Google has not set clear written policies about its data sharing between business units.

Third, the Gmail system sets potentially dangerous precedents and establishes reduced expectations of privacy in email communications. These precedents may be adopted by other companies and governments and may persist long after Google is gone.

We urge you to suspend the Gmail service until the privacy issues are adequately addressed.

 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9221360/Google_to_let_users_see_the_Why_behind_Gmai l_search_ads

Remember that Google stores all information about you that it can get its hands on - so use StartPage.

StartPage

http://www.startpage.com/

Or,

ixquick

http://www.ixquick.com/

Is privacy a lost cause? Google wants to be the "Mind of God" through the internet, while IBM wants to do so through physical means such as IBM's Smarter Planet and Traveler that would track all your travel through all means of transportation.

"Technology can't replace God": Pope

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/17/us-pope-idUSTRE73G0FA20110417

http://googleopoly.net

http://www.startpage.com/

Or,

ixquick

http://www.ixquick.com/