Google are to stop spying on consumer’s email content in Gmail (well, at least for advertising purposes). Currently the search engine giant uses the content of your personal emails to scan and detect context/interests so that they can serve contextually relevant ads to consumers.
In a recent Blog post, Diane Green, SVP of Google Cloud, has announced that
“…Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change.”
Interestingly, whilst they’ve said they won’t use the content for “ads personalisation”, they haven’t said they won’t stop scanning them altogether.
Despite that, this is a big and very welcome move from the giant who has eyes everywhere. In a time where privacy is everything, this is clearly a step to reassure users that Google do indeed respect user’s privacy – or at least part of it. 😉