Google and Microsoft slacking off

I use Gmail a lot and earn Google advertising revenue in the process - which is fine in principle. However, while I appreciate the generally good and reliable service Google provides, I am starting to see a few lingering issues with Gmail that just don't seem to get fixed.

The first one is mixing HTTP when you have set Gmail to be served over HTTPS only. I do this in the hope of staying at least somewhat safe when I'm using untrusted networks here and overseas, so it's not great to see Chrome tell you that:

. . . I'm not using an encrypted connection even though I asked for one. It's been like this for a long, long time, unfortunately, and I wish Google would sort it out.

Providing content over HTTPS seems problematic for Google, clearly. Its home page Gmail gadget stops working if you enable HTTPS:

That error message should read "information is permanently unavailable."

To be fair to Google, other providers such as Microsoft don't seem to be able to do HTTPs fully either. If you ask Hotmail to give you enhanced security or SSL, it does so, but only for the login. After login is completed, you get the Windows Live site and Hotmail in plain ole HTTP. Without warning, I should add. Sure, having the login page SSL protected helps some, but why not go the whole hog here, Microsoft?

Finally, Google's anti-virus protection for Gmail attachments is undoubtedly a useful feature, but it seems to die more often than not:

I highlighted that warning message, because it's not actually that easy to spot for users. There's also no setting to prevent non-scanned attachments from being opened.

"Could do better."

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