Ever since Google first introduced its free Gmail email service some 13 years ago, it has been analyzing the text of emails to personalize advertising displayed both within Gmail and elsewhere. However, in effect with the recent change of events, Google is finally reforming its behaviour and refraining from scanning user emails in consumer version of Gmail.
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With this change, ad personalization in Gmail will be based only on the user’s Google account settings, as is the practice with ad personalization in other Google products such as Search ads.
During that period – and even before that – Google has been struggling to be relevant to business users, and this scanning of emails for the objective of ad personalization was one of the impediments for client signups. She was hired in November 2015 to convince more companies to do business with Google, as Amazon and Microsoft emerged as the market forerunners in cloud storage services. But Google’s decision may help users feel better about parting with more of their data in the future.
Google didn’t say when it will make the change, only that it will happen “later this year”.
According to Pracejus, there are likely many Gmail users who were never aware that this practice is taking place. For instance, assuming that as consumer Gmail is used for ads, then maybe the G Suite version is as well. So far, the inbox scanning doesn’t seem to have hampered Gmail’s growth; it now has 1.2 billion users.
Google offers G Suite which includes office software, email and other tools for paying users. Google has now announced that they will instead rely on a user’s activities on Google’s sites and partner sites for those purposes. Usage of the service by large business has more than doubled over the past year, the company said.
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Case in point: The company recently introduced a new feature dubbed Smart Reply for Gmail’s mobile apps. However, there are also many that might not care regardless, adding that the younger generation is usually more comfortable with targeted ads than baby boomers or Gen X-ers.
