Those ads that you see in Gmail are targeted to you. Google scans the contents of your email. The practice has long been controversial and Google has finally decided to stop doing it.
The company has confirmed in a post on its official blog that it’s no longer going to scan the email contents of Gmail users for the purpose of selling targeted advertising to you. This should make a lot of gmail users happy.
Google has been doing this almost since it launched its email service. And it does give users the option to opt out of targeted advertising. Just to be clear, the company limits this to personal Gmail accounts and doesn’t scan contents of corporate Gmail accounts. Gee, how nice of them. Well, it turns out that this has cost them.
The chief of Google’s cloud division Diane Greene told Financial Times that even though this practice doesn’t apply to corporate accounts, it has still made it difficult for the company to find and retain corporate clients for its cloud services business. Apparently, potential clients are confused about Google’s business tactics and are apprehensive about trusting it with their sensitive information. So this should help clarify things.
“Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change. This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products,” Greene wrote in the post.
Source Ubergizmo
Filed Under: Technology News