Ads will continue to appear inside the free version of Gmail, as promoted messages. But instead of scanning a user’s email, the ads will now be targeted with other personal information Google already pulls from sources such as search and YouTube. Ads based on scanned email messages drew lawsuits and some of the most strident criticism the company faced in its early years, but offered marketers a much more targeted way to reach consumers.
Mark Bergen
Good decision, although I suspect it has little to do with Google suddenly caring about privacy, and more with the declining relevance of email as means of personal communication. After all, it the majority of messages now flows through encrypted mobile apps, and not through Google’s servers, it makes little sense to process this trickle of emails, because the gathered data will be less and less relevant for targeting.
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