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Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

• skrause 9y ago
  I never understood the argument that some automatic scanning for keywords is like "reading" your mail. By that same logic isn't Gmail's spam filter still "reading" your mail? It is classifying your mail based on content after all...
  • dingaling 9y ago
    It's like my accountant reading my receipts to create my tax return versus a sleazy salesman sneaking a peek at them to find new ways to sell me stuff.
    • cybrjoe 9y ago
      It's more like your accountant preparing your tax return for free in exchange for aggregating data about your receipts and offering you goods and services you may be interested in.
      • skrebbel 9y ago
        > and offering you goods and services you may be interested in. Sounds like a sleazy salesman to me.
      • ouid 9y ago
        Let's split the difference. It's like your accountant preparing your tax return in exchange for using that tax return to develop a model of your spending habits. The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing your tax returns, and in fact is such that if you were simply to collect that data yourself, sell it on the open market, and spend a portion of the proceeds on the tax prep service, you would end up with profit, and the tax prep service would still exist.
        • dmix 9y ago
          > The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing your tax returns It's likely the value Google got out of scanning your email wasn't worth that much in terms of modelling profiles for ads. Probably because having both your search history and "anonymized" Google analytics, plus the sea of data that comes from owning Android is more than enough data that Google/Doubleclick needs. From a purely capitalist perspective I'd bet the utility of them scraping this data no longer outweighs the privacy costs. But at the same time Google is still scanning attachments for child porn and likely other data out of national security interests. And they still can access your data on a case-by-case basis which from a FISA perspective is a rubber-stamp away from accessing your data from 2 hops away from someone who may or may not have done something bad. I personally will not weigh using Google vs any other email service in terms of privacy any different after this measure. But I still appreciate their efforts to reduce the "standard pratice" nature of scanning private email. If I do use anything Google-related I will not associate my personal identity in any way with the service, which is still requirement for Google play. You can still use a fake gmail account and prepaid Google gift cards bought with cash to disassociate your identity from using the service. Although that's still well beyond the investment the majority of people are willing to make. Regardless privacy comes at a cost these days. Good OPSEC > trusting cloud services privacy policy. You can either not use the services or invest in protecting your data when using them. I will still cheer on Google's efforts to make those of us who care about privacy live's easier. I'm not naive enough to ignore how their business model works but that doesn't mean they always have to take the easy route and hand everything over without considering the costs - as many ISP/Telecom companies seem to do.
          • ouid 9y ago
            I disagree with you, but from the perspective that my email contains the history of every transaction I have ever made, all of the newsletters I sign up to, and, for another 3 days, ~50% of my conversations, since I do a good chunk of my communicating over gChat. Consumer preferences change over time, so google is far more interested in the thing I bought yesterday than the thing I bought 4 months ago, so being able to read my emails is still a current interest of theirs.
      • dwighttk 9y ago
        how about: my accountant preparing my tax return for free in exchange for... inviting ...a sleazy salesman [to] sneak a peek at them and find new ways to sell me stuff.
        • dgacmu 9y ago
          That's not very accurate. It's more like: Your accountant prepares your tax return for free. They also have a lot of boxes of flyers provided to them by people who want to sell things. After preparing your tax return, they use their knowledge of your return to choose which flyer to put into the envelope. They then send that envelope back to you, and when you open it to read your tax return, there's a flyer for something else paperclipped to the front with a note saying "Thought you might find this interesting." (In particular, the accountant is only one who sees the information in your tax return.)
          • dwighttk 9y ago
            Unfortunately for you the accountant uses an insecure lock on the office door.
      • isomorphic 9y ago
        > offering you goods and services you may be interested in The thing is: never, not even once, has Google offered me an ad with goods and services I was interested in.
        • jpeg_hero 9y ago
          ok, maybe Gmail ads have been irrelevant to you. but surely you've done a google search and been presented with interesting goods and services?!?!
          • bostik 9y ago
            Anecdata: in the past 5 years or so the number of relevant or interesting search ads Google has shown me can be counted with one hand. - If I'm searching for technical documentation, I couldn't care less about all the random consultancies or shitty-SaaS-of-the-day trash that populate the ad slot(s). - If I'm looking for technical details on a piece of malware or vulnerability research, the last thing I want to see on the page is a goddamn AV junkware full-frontal. - If I'm searching for details on some car models ... why the fk is google shoving insurance ads on my screen real estate? And so on. As far as I'm concerned, online advertising is a stripmined toxic dump. Only the shittiest swindlers and shadiest extortion artists remain.
            • pbhjpbhj 9y ago
              >- If I'm searching for details on some car models ... why the fk is google shoving insurance ads on my screen real estate? // Brand marketing. It may not work on you, but it works in general. Personally I consider myself pretty imune to marketing but when you think "who else should I check to switch my car insurance to" then that brand is going to pop up if it's been fed to your brain enough. Indeed when you're looking at a list of similar offers the one that's associated with a name you already know will seem somehow more trustsworthy, it's an insidious finagling of a brand in to your brain drip by drip. Why do they do it? It works.
          • takeda 9y ago
            The only times I clicked on those was: 1. the site was actually what I typed in the address but forgot to add .com etc 2. by accident
      • gitlabuser 9y ago
        Here's a real life example. It's like Credit Karma who prepares your tax return for free, but then uses the info to help target you for ads on credit cards, loans, etc. [this is exactly happening]
      • CamperBob2 9y ago
        It's more like your accountant preparing your tax return for free in exchange for aggregating data about your receipts and offering you goods and services you may be interested in. Hmm. I could actually see that working, as a spinoff of concierge services offered by companies like American Express.
      • belorn 9y ago
        If its about offering me goods and services that I may be interested in, then ad blocking is a useful feature for both me and the advertiser. If I am not interested in any goods or services then no offering or aggregation is needed. On the other hand, if its about offering me good and services which other companies want me to become interested in, then we have a different deal going on.
      • Markoff 9y ago
        can your accountant prepare your taxes without looking at your receipts? no. can webmail provider provide you email service without asking your emails? sure he can
    • EGreg 9y ago
      I don't understand why seeing an ad is so bad. So a sleazy salesman is more annoying because they are in your way. But if you're going to see ads anyway, I'd rather they be relevant!! Can soemone explain why given that there will be ads either way they actually prefer irrelevant ads?
      • bostik 9y ago
        > I'd rather they be relevant Corollary: if you can't show a relevant ad, HOW ABOUT NOT SHOWING AN IRRELEVANT AT ALL?
        • EGreg 9y ago
          Actually, it is not a corollary.
      • watwut 9y ago
        Relevant ad is euphemism for "ad that makes you buy stuff you would happily not own otherwise". Since ads in general work (they make people buy more or different stuff) and you can not objectively evaluate whether you was influenced by ads, it is rational to avoid them. Practically, once add service knows I am women, it insist on showing me ads for menstruation cups everywhere I browse. I also find juxtaposition of baby accessories and relaxation bullshit on metal, programming or games site mood killing. When they know less about me, I actually get less weird more neutral less crappy ads.
        • rubber_duck 9y ago
          >Relevant ad is euphemism for "ad that makes you buy stuff you would happily not own otherwise". Since ads in general work (they make people buy more or different stuff) and you can not objectively evaluate whether you was influenced by ads, it is rational to avoid them. Umm - you should avoid getting information because it might influence you to buy things ? There's nothing wrong with what you said, in an ideal world ads would be just that - informing the customer about your product - and influencing their decisions with information. The psychological marketing tricks to make a thing more attractive is also a value add. Problem is it's easy to be misleading, create disinformation and it can be very profitable - that's what leads to shitty borderline fraudulent ads we have.
    • fserb 9y ago
      if you accountant was a computer. We have to stop this madness of thinking that "John READS my diary" means the same thing as "The function fread() READS nitems objects". Those don't mean the same thing except in a metaphorical sense. It's insane.
      • CaptSpify 9y ago
        why does it matter? Google has access to read my email, and if they want (or are pushed to), they can single me out and then go and read them. Sure, 9/10 times it's a bot reading my emails, but there's nothing stopping them from doing it.
        • fserb 9y ago
          it matters exactly because of what you are saying. You do have protections against someone reading your email at Google. Both from a expectation of privacy, but also from a company perspective. You also do have some non-expectation of privacy (if, for example, the US government wants to read your google email, they can ask for it and they eventually will). The day someone with a brain and an opinion on Kim Kardashian at Google reads your email, there is a HUGE difference from when Google is "reading" your email for ads/spam/spelling/whatever. You don't want to blur that line being wishywashy with language. You want to know that difference. The fact that it could happen is why you need that clear separation between "machine reading" and "a person reading".
          • CaptSpify 9y ago
            > You do have protections against someone reading your email at Google. And those protections are bullshit. I have no guarantee that they are not reading my email. If a bot has access, a person has access, and people abuse their access all the time. In fact, there have been cases of googlers reading peoples email. And I'm not blurring any line, I'm stating: Gmail can, has been, and will be abused. To pretend that is not the case is, frankly, naive.
            • jsmthrowaway 9y ago
    • h1d 9y ago
      Why try to pretend Google is nice to you? If their spam filter gathers the most relevant words and keep them stored for admins to look for the sake of tuning or whatever and maybe the admin also works in the ad department, perhaps checking on your email isn't for ad targeting. You need to give up on your content the day you started using gmail, no matter what the TOS says.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • roywiggins 9y ago
    The spam filter is for my benefit, but scanning for ad keywords is designed to benefit someone else, not me.
    • blowski 9y ago
      To play Devil's advocate, the ads benefit you because they make Gmail free.
      • StreamBright 9y ago
        I would rather pay and do not share anything with Google (or for that matter all of Google's partners who can purchase our data)
        • ams6110 9y ago
          There are many options to pay for email, fastmail just for one. Do you use one of them?
          • emodendroket 9y ago
            Google isn't just an e-mail service, really.
            • thomasfoster96 9y ago
              But… you don’t really have to use Gmail to use most of Google’s other products, just as you don’t really have to use (actively) Google+ to use other Google products either.
              • emodendroket 9y ago
                But imagine you use an Android phone, for instance. There's a whole bunch of integrated stuff that works well together that wouldn't if you had a Google account and then kept your e-mail somewhere else. It's not really a 1:1 comparison.
  • cookiecaper 9y ago
    The spam filter is [assumed to be] transient/generalized. While a user may set special tuning parameters to classify what they consider "junk", this probably reveals more about the inadequacy of the spam filter than it does about the user. On the other hand, a program which analyzes mail to ascertain the tastes, interests, and personal plans of the participants is mining much more sensitive data, and it's compiling/storing it off-site long-term, and it's very specific to the individuals involved. All of us who've used Gmail know how creepy it can get. Send a couple of mails about marriage and suddenly you start seeing targeted ads about engagement rings or other marriage-related things. Google stores this forever and they'll say "Ah, we know this guy was talking about marriage 10 years ago; traditionally, marriages fail after 5 years, we've detected a tense tone in his mails to his wife, BEEP BOP BOOP, DIVORCE LAWYER AD IS RELEVANT". This inference is not only dubious (ethically and technically), but anyone observing your browsing while you're logged in will see these ads and may assume that you're seeing those ads because you've been searching for information on divorce, not because Google's inference is overzealous, although it may very well be. Search and replace with anything else: new credit cards/bankruptcy lawyers, research on a medical condition/ads for related medicines, etc.; the potential for creepy inference is endless, not to mention the concrete surveillance value provided to literal spies (via PRISM), nor the risk of compromise/abuse outside of the ad space. They don't have to get and process your entire mail archive; they just have to draw their inferences from Google's own inferences in your compiled taste/interest profile. That's much more serious than a throwaway analysis of whether a mail contains spammy properties or not.
    • luhn 9y ago
      > Google stores this forever and they'll say "Ah, we know this guy was talking about marriage 10 years ago; traditionally, marriages fail after 5 years, we've detected a tense tone in his mails to his wife, BEEP BOP BOOP, DIVORCE LAWYER AD IS RELEVANT". Have you actually seen anything like this? In my experience the ad targeting seems like extremely shallow keyword analysis.
      • ksk 9y ago
        This gets to the heart of how divisions inside a company justify their budget and where human self-preservation kicks in. For e.g. A lawyer inside the company HAS to be on the lookout for supposed infringements of IP or situations where their "expertise" is required. The idea is that once you have any apparatus in place, and funds allocated to the maintenance/operation there of, you will find that people come up with creative ways to use that apparatus to either cement their position in the company or to improve career prospects. This applies to lots of domains, the obvious one being the government. Once you have a drone program, you'll find that someone somewhere WILL find a way to justify its usefulness. My main problem with data collection is the permanent nature of it, where someone somewhere at some point in time, possibly when the computational costs become feasible, will come up with a seemingly innocuous use of the data that will spiral out of control. Also, is Google hack-proof? Judging by the lawsuits around the self-driving division, apparently its trivial to steal data if you're on the inside.
  • bradjohnson 9y ago
    One requires google to build a profile and have the knowledge in order to serve you their advertisements and the other can be done almost entirely client side. The spam filter doesn't need to phone home for anything other than updating the list.
  • austincheney 9y ago
    In the US a service provider is allowed to violate all manners of privacy for the express limitation of ensuring maintenance and system health. Spam blocking would qualify as maintenance, but advertising would not. I suspect Google violates all manners of privacy in an automated way for all manners of reasons and qualifies such in their terms and conditions.
  • ksk 9y ago
    Does the automated nature of the permanent data collection change anything? How about an automated drone with a camera mounted on it that follows you everywhere and records every action, indefinitely, purely automated ofcource, so that an advertising company can helpfully remind you about the awesome great $6 lunch menu when you walk past McBurger at lunchtime, or about picking up some hemorrhoids cream from MediCo because a machine learning algorithm saw you scratch your butt and deduced something.
    • Ajedi32 9y ago
      Depends. Is that drone providing me with some other useful service, or is it following me around entirely without my knowledge or consent? Gmail provides me with a free email service. They already have the full text of all my emails. If they want to use that data to help decide what ads to serve me, I have no problem with that so long as that data isn't shared with anyone else without my consent.
      • sqeaky 9y ago
        > data isn't shared with anyone else without my consent Do you have any way of verifying this? I am not accusing google of anything, I just find this to be an interesting level of trust to have with a free online service.
        • Ajedi32 9y ago
          Google is a large, generally reputable company which has very little to gain and everything to lose by sharing my personal information with others in violation of their own privacy policy. In the absence of any evidence that they _are_ sharing my private information with others, I see no reason not to trust them in this regard.
          • sqeaky 9y ago
            I use GMail for similar reasons, they are reputable, but I have no expectation they won't share my data once it makes financial sense.
  • DanBC 9y ago
    And yet everyone's up in arms if GCHQ / NSA does it.
    • thomasahle 9y ago
      NSA doing it is a lot worse. There is no transparency on what they do. I get no benefits in return for sharing my data. They have license to do all kinds of nasty things to me, that Google would have to go through a court for. From blocking my flights to making me disappear at night.
      • briandear 9y ago
        No benefits? That’s bit like saying that security screenings at airports offer no benefit to anyone. While security screenings are inefficient and could be improved, that doesn’t mean they offer zero benefit. Also what’s the likelihood of the NSA blocking your flight or making you disappear in the night? You probably should fear crossing the street more in terms of statistical likelihood of harm. I get the privacy/freedom arguments however the hyperbole around this stuff is getting ridiculous as the fears are badly supported by actual data and statistical significance. More people drowned in swimming pools last year than were “disappeared” by the NSA but there seems little hysteria around swimming pools. I pretty sure most of us don’t know a single person on a no-fly list. Some high levels of paranoia around here it seems.
        • ionised 9y ago
          I'm curious as to where you are getting your statistics on people disappeared by the intelligence services that you can say this.
    • eh78ssxv2f 9y ago
      I think "consent" is important here. GMail does it with the consent of the user.
    • CamperBob2 9y ago
      Corporations didn't murder a hundred million of their own customers in the last century alone. It takes a government to do that. Consequently, governments have to be held to higher standards, not lower ones.
  • omarforgotpwd 9y ago
    The distinction to me is: Are they building and saving some data structure that they've created based on my emails which is designed to target ads towards me, but could be used by some nefarious actor to learn a lot about my life? The spam filter (hopefully) probably doesn't store that much about me, but an ad targeting bot could be a lot more problematic.
  • fullshark 9y ago
    Users like spam filtering, don't like ads.
  • morganvachon 9y ago
    The problem is that it's not just your email. If you send an email to a Gmail user, Google is now building a profile on you (or was until this move) as well as your recipient. Did you give explicit consent to Google? Did you sign a EULA or SLA with them allowing this? No, they just did it anyway. Even someone who makes a point to keep themselves off of Google's radar will end up indexed and sold to the highest bidder if they send even one innocent email to a Gmail user.
    • meanderer 9y ago
      Building profiles of senders can be necessary, e.g., for detecting spammer accounts. Also, email is transmitted in plain text. Sending an email is more like shouting to your friends in the street, rather than putting a letter into an envelope mailed to the recipient. Thus, I don't think an explicit consent is needed. That said, I understand that fair use of such information is a concern.
      • netheril96 9y ago
        > Also, email is transmitted in plain text. Sending an email is more like shouting to your friends in the street, rather than putting a letter into an envelope mailed to the recipient. Thus, I don't think an explicit consent is needed. These days Gmail will transfer your email protected by TLS if possible. Not shouting at all.
        • morganvachon 9y ago
          Exactly. Google seems to be of two minds about privacy. They want to show that they protect your information from the rest of the world, but they expect 100% knowledge of your information in return, so they can sell it to their advertisers. I get that that's their business model, which is why I dropped them completely in favor of paid services that don't sell my information.
  • late2part 9y ago
    By your logic, the NSA isn't recording your calls or emails, just filing them away for classification?
  • real-hacker 9y ago
    A frightening theory: it doesn't need to read your email anymore. It has read 10 years worth of your mail, and trained such an accurate model, that any more training data don't make much of a difference.
• robbart90 9y ago
  "The decision didn’t come from Google’s ad team, but from its cloud unit, which is angling to sign up more corporate customers." Interesting timing with the story earlier this week about Wal-Mart telling vendors to stop using AWS
• WisNorCan 9y ago
  This most likely is a pragmatic financial decision. Contextual advertising is generating a lower CPM than data/person based advertising. Said differently the relevance that can be extracted from your specific email is less than the cumulative knowledge that Google has about you from other sources.
  • mongmong 9y ago
    But couldn't the contextual email data be used to supplement the global personal data google already has on you? I don't understand why they would willingly forgo this data.
  • elsewhen 9y ago
    Gmail ads were no just contextual. Advertisers were able to target people who received email from a particular domain. Can you imagine the power of being able to target customers of a competitor that has been developing their customer relationships for years? This is 100% conjecture, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was this domain targeting (which is what many advertisers were using) that was the thing that Google's big clients were complaining about.
• kolemcrae 9y ago
  Interesting - as an advertiser I generally recommend using the email address "sent from" as your main source of targeting but combining that with specific keywords within the gmail campaign can be super helpful at finding people at the exact right time.
  • shostack 9y ago
    Yeah, targeting competitor domain names tends to perform pretty well. Do you know if domain targeting is disappearing with this update?
• sidcool 9y ago
  Google will still show ads in Gmail, just not based on email contents.
• jmull 9y ago
  I should probably get fitted for a tinfoil hat because my immediate reaction was, "Oh shit! They must've developed something now that tracks you better and is less obvious."
  • josephjrobison 9y ago
    Definitely, they probably realize they get better targeting by using demographic metrics like Facebook does - age, wealth, gender, interests, likes, etc - than they do by scanning email contents for keywords.
  • sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Actually, you can buy some paint that blocks all RF signals. It's absurdly expensive but quite effective. There aren't many ways to get signals out of a room painted with the stuff. If you're thinking "Why not just build a faraday cage?" then you're thinking the right thing.
    • problems 9y ago
      I've thought about turning my whole house into a faraday cage way too many times to be considered sane still.
      • sillysaurus3 9y ago
        It's fun, isn't it? It's one of those things that costs way too much to be practical but you can't help but try to think of ways to get the cost down. Mini-SpaceX in a useless domain.
      • pythonaut_16 9y ago
        I've always thought that would be cool, then just have a fiber connection for communications and either air gap your main power or provide your own via solar and wind.
      • Overtonwindow 9y ago
        Ermmm we used the copper nanotube paint once on an office and, well, it sucked. Bad. Cell phones only worked in this small corner of the office, and wifi was chaotic. Something about signals can't get in, but they also can't get out, so they collide ...
• hilyen 9y ago
  Good for them. Though it goes without saying email is insecure. If enterprise clients dislike an algorithm scanning their email contents, maybe they should also consider that email generally has unencrypted transit and storage.
  • bitJericho 9y ago
    Very few servers store/transmit emails unencrypted...
    • icebraining 9y ago
      Not that few - more than 1 in 10 emails sent and received by Gmail are unencrypted: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/ https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/
      • bitJericho 9y ago
        That's higher than I would have expected. The question though, is who is not allowing encrypted emails? I wonder if it's mostly just China.
        • netheril96 9y ago
          Looking at the data (https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/#region=142 https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/#region...). The major Chinese players QQ and 163 do employ TLS, while the worst offenders of security are mostly Japanese. The Chinese government can just ask QQ and 163 for your email such that they don't need to see it in transit. Less work, too.
• VMG 9y ago
  Hope this increases the chance of E2E encryption
  • JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    How would you search your inbox? Or filter spam?
    • tareqak 9y ago
      You could search and filter after decryption (there are implementation issues with both for sure, but it is technically possible).
    • keganunderwood 9y ago
      Using metadata? Headers? Anything other than Tue email body would be nice. We still have blacklisting by IP and stuff like that. I mean if I write a Nigerian prince email and send it to my mum, it should reach her no matter what the text says, right?
      • softawre 9y ago
        Should it reach her though? What if I hacked your account and sent it via you? Or should metadata detect that?
    • keganunderwood 9y ago
      Using metadata? Headers? Anything other than Tue email body would be nice. We still have blacklisting by IP and stuff like that. I mean if I write a Nigerian prince email and send it to my mum, it should reach her no matter what the text says, right?
    • CaptSpify 9y ago
      Maybe having e2e is more important to some people than searching or spam filtering. Personally, I'd like to have the option, but as I don't, I don't use gmail.
    • jMyles 9y ago
• mavhc 9y ago
  Wonder if it's also a move that will help encrypted email become supported
• RichLewis007 9y ago
  It's about time! I wonder if this is due to the fact that if email encryption becomes common, the content will be inaccessible to Google anyway.
  • eli 9y ago
    I doubt it. That's a pretty big "if".
    • Spivak 9y ago
      If they're not using it for ads, there's a good chance that it's in Google's best interest to not know the contents of people's email. It lessens the impact of a potential breach, and it greatly simplifies their responses to gov't requests to 'we have no method to access this data, you must contact the account holder directly'.
      • netheril96 9y ago
        And then Google gets inundated from angry customers who forget their password or key for the encryption of their emails.
  • sigjuice 9y ago
    How many people have you seen who exchange encrypted email on a regular basis (or even at all)?
• mtgx 9y ago
  So much for the argument "how else is Google going to make money if it isn't reading your emails?!" Companies can make money without tracking you 24/7 and reading all of your private content. They just choose not to, because it's easier, and then spread the propaganda that those things are "needed" to stay in business.
  • JeremyBanks 9y ago
    Google can stop reading your emails because they track you so well you elsewhere. You wouldn't want to cite this example.
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  • kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
    Uhh, this defense would work better for a company that does not make like 90% of its multi-billion-dollar revenue selling ads.
• cm2012 9y ago
  That sucks for me as an advertiser. Gmail ads were great for B2B marketing.
  • wand3r 9y ago
    Man I am super sorry my basic privacy are getting in the way of your marketing effort. Edit: removed "rights"
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      To be fair, your “basic privacy rights” have nothing to do with this, it's about simplifying Google's efforts to sell services (which weren't actually effected by this anyway, but perception is a different thing than reality) to enterprise customers.
    • robotresearcher 9y ago
      Google can't read your post office mail. It can't read your Yahoo mail. But you certainly have no right that says it can't read your Gmail mail. You're confusing a want with a right.
  • criddell 9y ago
    I didn't think there were any ads in their business email.
    • greglindahl 9y ago
      This is referring to whether you see ads for hemorrhoid medication all over the Internets after talking about them in an email.
      • telcodud 9y ago
        As the founder and CTO of Blekko search engine, one would imagine that you would be familiar with Google's personalized advertising policies: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/143465?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/143465?hl=en (Found through a quick Google search)
• andrepd 9y ago
  How do you know? That's the problem with closed source software, and software that runs in someone else's computer. You have no idea what it does. You aren't in control. Someone else is deciding what code runs on your computer. That's a problem.
  • icebraining 9y ago
    Cue discussion of how with open source you don't really know either, since nobody can read and find out all the backdoors in the source of the whole system.
  • zyxzkz 9y ago
    This seems like a ridiculously paranoid worldview to have.
    • CaptSpify 9y ago
      I'd argue it's extremely naive to not have that world-view. Especially given all the evidence of closed-source software doing things like this in the past.
  • criddell 9y ago
    Even open source products still are running on largely closed systems. When has Intel ever let people see what's going on under the covers? The late 1970's was probably the last time anybody truly understood 100% of what was going on in any system. The bottom line is that you have to trust some people. I totally understand those that don't trust Google. I happen to trust them today.
  • seangrogg 9y ago
    How do you know they were ever reading your email to begin with? Maybe they were never reading your email and this is just a publicity stunt to backtrack on an unpopular decision that they never actually made.
  • mattlondon 9y ago
    Except web-based (or "cloud" now I guess) services like gmail are not running on your computers (apart from the javascript, but you can see that so you should be happy). In this case it is google's code running on google's computers.
• ethanpil 9y ago
  Does that mean that Google now has no more use for Gmail, and soon millions of people will be scrambling to cover yet another product sunset? That would certainly cause an enormous loss of goodwill, but.... imagine this scenario: Google has some slow growth quarters, they need to keep the numbers up for shareholders. They start to examine what they can squeeze. Gmail costs them X (hundreds?) millions per year, but doesn't gain much from it... Certainly its unlikely, as it is also a SSO tool, etc. Still....
  • kingbirdy 9y ago
    Considering gmail is a major part of google apps as well, I imagine they're making plenty of money off of it
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • seangrogg 9y ago
    I significantly doubt it. It's ubiquitous internally. It's a major selling point of GSuite. It'll likely remain one of Google's biggest ad-serving faces outside of Search. They may get rid of one of their applications (gmail OR inbox), but I doubt they'd get rid of the entire platform. They'd lose more revenue than they'd recover.
• davb 9y ago
  But will they stop using Hangouts IM content for customer segmentation? I probably say much more relevant things in Hangouts (from a marketing perspective) than in email.
• Overtonwindow 9y ago
  I think I've become jaded because I just don't believe it. It's like Google Home. A wonderful device but when I heard it may start listening to everything I say... I just figured yeah, that should be expected. So now I just expect Google to read, listen, and analyze everything I do with their products.
  • okreallywtf 9y ago
    Maybe I don't understand google home because I don't have one, but to be able to detect whatever keywords cause it to listen to you doesn't it have to listen to everything you say? I feel like any device that has a microphone is suspect if you want total privacy, but listening to what you say seems like an integral part of the device. You can only hope (and independently verify) that they don't store everything you say.
    • huehehue 9y ago
      It's my understanding that there's a low power, always-on service listening for stuff like "Alexa"/"OK Google", and only when it hears a keyword does it start "listening" and sending data back for parsing/processing. I could be wrong and/or they could be lying about how the product really works. Could probably monitor your network traffic if you really wanted to find out.
    • SquareWheel 9y ago
      They use basic detection to listen for keywords locally, and only if they keyword is triggered will they start sending data to their servers (which has significantly more powerful language parsing logic).
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• hkmurakami 9y ago
  Won't people keep assuming gmail reads their emails at this point though?
• MarkMc 9y ago
  OK but will Google stop reading my email for other types of ads? For example, if I write "I love coffee" in an email, am I more likely to see a Starbucks ad when I visit watch a YouTube video?
  • kolemcrae 9y ago
    Wee yeah - it says they will no longer scan emails.... Instead they will use your youtube data, search data, website visit data etc.
    • CobrastanJorji 9y ago
      In addition, I suspect, given that every time you walk into a Starbucks your phone is probably connecting to the network "Google Starbucks", that they probably know how you feel about coffee.
• kentosi 9y ago
  I don't understand why there isn't an option for me to pay for Google to remove ads from gmail. I've already paid for Youtube Red and couldn't be happier.
  • SN76477 9y ago
    https://gsuite.google.com/products/gmail/ https://gsuite.google.com/products/gmail/ About $60 a year I have about 8 accounts that I use.
    • alphonsegaston 9y ago
      It says it's exempt from ads in this specific context, but is it actually free of their data mining? If they still use the data to track and push whatever they're selling you in other contexts, the presence of the ads themselves is an ancillary concern.
      • halflings 9y ago
        From the G Cloud FAQ [0]: > Google Cloud does not scan your data or email in G Suite Services for advertising purposes. Our automated systems scan and index your data to provide you with your services and to protect your data, such as to perform spam and malware detection, to sort email for features like Priority Inbox and to return fast, powerful search results when users search for information in their accounts. The situation is different for our free offerings and the consumer space. [0] https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650?hl=en
      • ma2rten 9y ago
        According to the article it is.
        • alphonsegaston 9y ago
          Right, I read it. But it's still not actually clear to me whether they are ceasing ALL mining of email data for business accounts, or are just not funneling it to a specific set of ad programs. To me, at least, that seems an important point of clarification.
• chaitime 9y ago
  What happens to the data that was already collected. Legally they can still use that data right?
• nether 9y ago
  Switch to Protonmail.
• rootsudo 9y ago
  How nice of Google.
• nachtigall 9y ago
  Seriously, there's private, ad-free mail for 1$ a months: https://posteo.de/en/ https://posteo.de/en/ or https://mailbox.org/en/ https://mailbox.org/en/
• siliconc0w 9y ago
  I think there is some interesting middle ground where you could use machine learning to go from 'show only relevant ads' to 'show only ads you might actually click on with greater than .001 probability'. I guess this is like 'extreme' outlier detection but it'd be interesting to see what revenue the ads at the 'long tail' of likelihood generate anyway. My guess the bulk of it is from the standard high CPC stuff like Mortages and Insurance. Google says it does this but i'm not too sure - I've never intentionally clicked an adword and yet they're still shown to me. Anyway this may solve the tragedy of the commons situation we're in now and allow us to move away from the technology war of ad blockers, ad blocker blockers, ad blocker blocker blockers, etc. edit: removed comment on clarity of Gsuite vs Free due to downvote brigade.
  • rory096 9y ago
    Seems pretty clear to me. GSuite never had email scanning. >Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud sells a package of office software, called G Suite, that competes with market leader Microsoft Corp. Paying Gmail users never received the email-scanning ads like the free version of the program, but some business customers were confused by the distinction and its privacy implications, said Diane Greene, Google’s senior vice president of cloud. “What we’re going to do is make it unambiguous,” she said.
  • guyzero 9y ago
    Per Diane Greene's post, this has always been the case for GSuite and now consumer Gmail will catch up: "Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change" https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...
  • DrewHintz 9y ago
    "Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change." Original post: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in... Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on this.
• fernyherrera 9y ago
  word
• flavor8 9y ago
  Fine. Can they please make Google Apps users first class users in the google ecosystem?
• jikeo 9y ago
  I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems weird that the reporter nor any of the 140+ comments so far seemingly don't mention the recently published proposal for a new ePrivacy directive in the EU that will make it a lot harder for Google to scan e-mails in the first place. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-idUSKBN14U1FL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-idUSKBN14U1FL https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-facebook-google-privacy-rules-ec-european-directive https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-... http://www.kemplittle.com/site/articles/kl_bytes/the-draft-eprivacy-regulation10-things-you-need-to-know http://www.kemplittle.com/site/articles/kl_bytes/the-draft-e...
  • chicob 9y ago
    That directive might be related to what's happening. But let's not be naive: if Google will stop reading our emails in order to send us personalized ads, that's because it doesn't really need to. People share just enough outside their email environment for Google to do its thing. Another sign of which those worrying about privacy should be aware.
    • asdfGUYasdfn 9y ago
      et al Facebook.
    • gbacon 9y ago
      > 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.
    • hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
      Exactly. Google already knows a shit ton about you, and given how data driven they are, I guarantee they came to the conclusion that they would still be able to show highly targeted ads with little or no loss in revenue or click-through-rates rates. Heck, dollars to donuts they've already A/B tested the shit out of it to reach this conclusion.
• ChuckMcM 9y ago
  It was interesting (but I suppose a random bit) that after reading this article a new email showed up in my gmail inbox that was spam. I wonder if this isn't the first move in a plan to create a 'pay' gmail service for individuals.
• vaishaksuresh 9y ago
  I very recently switched to fastmail and couldn't be happier. For $90 a year, I don't have to deal with people snooping and tracking me around for ads. I know google is trying to give me value with all their facial recognition and recommendations, but I don't think it is going to end well. When it does end badly, it will be too late for the user because we would've given up all the data. I don't want Google to build models to track my toddler's face when he isn't even capable of consenting to such tracking.
  • samblr 9y ago
    how are you sure that fastmail is secure and they aren't using ur data to build models ? because there is an annual subscription or they advertise it so ?
    • bthrn 9y ago
      They advertise it as such. From their privacy policy: "Incoming messages are scanned for the purpose of spam detection unless you disable spam protection for your account... To make message searching fast, we build an index of your messages (this is a table, just like you would find at the back of a reference book, in which you can look up a word to quickly find the emails in which it appears). No information from any of these activities is used for any other purpose, or to compile any kind of profile on our users." https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html
      • samblr 9y ago
        Is it generally possible to reconstruct email(=text) with indicies if they are stolen/hacked ? Although Im not questioning fastmail ability to provide secured email service. Yet I cannot help think why I would rely on a small player for email. I would ask what is the probability of fastmail service getting hacked say compared to gmail. (Somebody has right pointed out that ) Ad relevance to your email is not same as reading - thinking in same vein should also lead us to believe even (spam) classification can be termed as reading.
• itiman 9y ago
  The fact of reading emails for ads is disputable even if it's used for a new purpose, YT.
  • itiman 9y ago
    HAL: 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.
• rasz 9y ago
  Will they also stop tracking clicked links in gmail?
• asdfGUYasdfn 9y ago
  Right, but not Alphabet. They just shifted it.
• redthrowaway 9y ago
  I suspect that means they no longer need to, and have better ways of targeting ads at you.
• m-p-3 9y ago
  But they'll most likely read them for another purpose, for example training their AI.
• myrandomcomment 9y ago
  So this never really bugged me. It is a damn good free service. I also love how it picks up on plane tickets, hotel reservations, etc and puts them in the calendar. Makes life simpler. If ad companies fix something please fix the I searched for something and bought it but I get adds for it for the next 4 weeks. That bugs me.
  • aembleton 9y ago
    Frustratingly, by reading my emails Google should know that I've bought something and so don't need ads about it. But hey, they don't seem to have used that data.
    • everythingswan 9y ago
      At that point, it's on the advertiser. It's a weird dynamic where they want to enable the advertiser to factor that in and not advertise to you, but they want to maximize rev and imperfect advertisers increases rev. ( = edit for grammar)
• aaln 9y ago
  Title should be: Google Will Stop Using Your Email Data for Gmail Ads.
• mozzarella 9y ago
  I wonder what the conversion rates on these within-client ads are. I know I've never opened any no matter how well-targeted or 'interesting' the ads were, because the immediate response is to just want to sweep the inbox clean.
• jshelly 9y ago
  And I am in the middle of migrating to icloud from google. Not going to stop at this point.
  • erikb 9y ago
    Not sure if sarcasm or serious stupidity. Please clarify.
    • jshelly 9y ago
      neither, serious, why? You seem to comment frequently here on HN where I consider most users to be above average in the level of intelligent replies so your trolling seems quite out of place.
• patkai 9y ago
  Google will stop reading my emails for Gmail ads because I will stop using Gmail. It's kind of a sad story, because they are the good guys, but once they built a huge company they started to focus on maintaining it, possibly at any cost. This is a cautionary tale: power corrupts. You, me, everyone. And yes, the web will produce dictators we never imagined possible, because the Internet is so powerful it will enable them.
  • sqeaky 9y ago
    I agree that the web is extremely powerful. I also think this power is symmetric in who it enables. Unlike land ownership or TV broadcasting entry isn't expensive and the needed tools can easily be smuggled. Anyone can easily gain immensely from this free-flowing font of knowledge and communication. A potential dictator must take great pains to use gain that huge power in the Internet era and I think you are right that we will see some insanely powerful dictators. However, I think we see fewer than in previous eras though.
• drusepth 9y ago
  Will there still be a way to opt-in? This seems like one of those decisions that is a net negative for functionality in favor of quelling some misguided privacy concerns. Hopefully this doesn't lessen the quality of ads by much.
  • bootlooped 9y ago
    This is the first time I've ever heard a person worry about the quality of the ads that are served to them.
    • crazygringo 9y ago
      I've often wondered why nobody brings this up more. If you're going to see ads for things, why on earth wouldn't you want them to try to better target you? The whole point is for you to find out about things that might be useful for you. Why would I want less of the useful things? Why would I want worse advertising?
      • thinkingemote 9y ago
        I think the question is what is advertising. Is it a service that educates or is it an intrusion that attempts to sell things? Is it both things? Why do some people dislike advertising? Is it only that they are unmatched? Are there other reasons. If you wish to find an answer to your wondering, wonder on those issues.
      • hrktb 9y ago
        I think some people make the assumption they are targeted for products that might be beneficial for them. But why would that mostly be the case ? Someone with an online shopping problem would be a perfect target for a flurry of ads, and getting better targeted ads would just be screwing that person more and more. Even in a saner scenario, the most informative ad you can imagine will still isolate you from the information you would have got by doing your own research. But since you have most of the information you wanted to have, you won't bother checking that much more. IMO even in the best case scenario, helping people to be lazy on things they are interested in is counterproductive in the long term.
• 4684499 9y ago
  I'm fine to let them scan my emails for spam filter, yet they use it as an excuse to justify their data collection and other things they do with my data, which is unacceptable for me. How would I know if they are going to do things against my interests one day? Ads targeting is already against mine. I used to see Google as a stalker. How naive I was. There are billions of people being stalked, exploited, and the whole process is automated. It comes to me that users are not victims of stalking, they are lab rats. Now Google stopped reading emails for ads, but they'll still read for other purposes, which still makes me as a user feel insecure. I value my privacy, I have my dignity, I shouldn't be a lab rat that they can just observe however they want only because they provide free cheese. Even if I start using a paid account to stop them from reading my emails (assume paid account with better privacy protection is possible), I couldn't stop them from reading others'. Stopping the data collection of one user won't change the situation, they still have other lab rats' data they could collect and analyze, which enables them to learn or predict other rats' behaviors. The worst thing is, Google is not the only company doing this right now. Surveillance technologies are developing, it's like every data company has grown their teeth and become more thirsty for blood. Edit: words.
• daveheq 9y ago
  Actually I'd prefer they did so they can optimize their cash flow and my targeted ads so I can continue using their free product and all it's nice features without any compromise.
• megamindbrian 9y ago
  Their AI knows what you are thinking anyways. The singularity is here!!
• prirun 9y ago
  My guess is that with Google Drive, they are getting way more information on individuals and companies than they ever got via email.
• ForFreedom 9y ago
  So what method have they adopted to display adverts in emails?
  • wdr1 9y ago
    It's literally in the article.
• tkubacki 9y ago
  Is free Outlook account scanning me email or for building ads profile or for any other purpose ?
• nerdiiee 9y ago
  How many of you have successfully prevented Google and Facebook for tracking your web habits ? What all steps do you take to prevent the tracking ?
• newscracker 9y ago
  <rant> Slightly off topic: I was very annoyed that this article didn't provide any links to Google's official statement/declaration about this change and when it's coming. Even if Bloomberg interviewed Diane Green for this article or asked questions and got official statements, it could've still provided an official link for the change. </rant> I found the link [1] here on HN. [1]: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...
• sebow 9y ago
  Yeah i doubt it
• geekme 9y ago
  I will never use a enterprise google product unless they have customer support. The customer support team should have humans and not robots.
  • Xorlev 9y ago
    Enterprise customers have support. It's not as feasible in the consumer space, the volume would be overwhelming.
• mrmondo 9y ago
  Too little, too late IMO
• Kluny 9y ago
  Gosh, thanks.
• funnyfacts365 9y ago
  Oh, the doublespeak... They will read your emails for everything else, like Google Now, just not to show you ads. ahahahahahahahah
• god_bless_usa 9y ago
  I'm not sure if I should be happy about this as much as shocked that they were reading em in the first place.
• LeoNatan25 9y ago
  Almost as if they want to do no evil. Almost.
• ziikutv 9y ago
  Some of my emails are "read" (as in shown as I have read them) when I have literally just received them. Is this referring to the same thing?
• Markoff 9y ago
  Thank you EU.
• chenster 9y ago
  Even though it never really bothered me because Apple Mail does not pull anything but the actual email message from Gmail, so I never see them, I still would like G to stop scanning anything personal. Period.
• iwantminus 9y ago
  Huh what a lie! I hope people do not believe these tax liars.
• iwantminus 9y ago
  Liars liars and one more times LIARS!!!
• haterswillhate 9y ago
  "Liars liars liars" somebody is talking the truth. I hope people would stop bowing to these corporations! Corporations that specialised to avoid taxes!
• haterswillhate 9y ago
  Please use any other email service, you get much less hassle!
• rzr 9y ago
  Title is misleading, it should be G will keep reading your emails except for G Ads.
• neves 9y ago
  It basically means that they already track so much information about you that they don't need to monitor the contents of your email anymore. Now Google knows: - all your searches (know your interests), - a great percentage of the pages you visit (ads and analytics) - all your contacts and how frequently you connect to them (metadata in gmail) - the places you visit (geolocation in Android) - Google logins (know the sites that interest you the most) Your email contents is completely unecessary.
• Lambent 9y ago
  To be clear, Google is not saying they'll stop reading your emails, only that your emails' contents won't be used to generate ad content.
• TheChosen 9y ago
  Quite obviously Google feels their profiling of users from other sources is good enough that they can afford to throw them a bone - not to mention save themselves a bit of effort since they will no longer need to maintain two systems for GMail.
• Manager 9y ago
  Well this is an interesting turn of events. I wasn't expecting this from a company that makes most of it's revenue through advertising. Sets a cautiously positive precedent.
• stubish 9y ago
  Not scanning emails for ads? Corporate business? I wonder if Google will be pushing end-to-end email encryption? They have already had some experiments on it. They have the majority browser, they have the lions share of email hosting. It they played their cards right, they could claim the entire email ecosystem, except for the small portion who won't use Google products on principle. The questions would be would 3rd party clients be allowed, and how would Apple fight it. Or maybe this is all just a smoke screen to sucker dumb corps. In the existing architecture, your emails still need to be scanned so they can be indexed for search. You could get the same result scanning these indexes as scanning the emails themselves, so from a privacy perspective it could be a non-event.
• hellbanner 9y ago
  But they will still track links you click from gmail.com ?