5 ms·

I work at google. I am pretty sure google calendar data is not used for ads targeting. The same is true for gmail.

by ma2rten 7y ago

diehunde 7y ago
what? true for Gmail?
chipperyman573 7y ago
Then what do they gain from it?
- jpalomaki 7y ago
  Companies pay €€€ to use it for business. Free version was good introduction. One reason for using Gmail (which is generating ad money) is the integration with calendar. Getting travel bookings automatically in calendar is useful.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ma2rten 7y ago
  It's part of the google eco system. It's integrated with android, google assistant, gmail, ... Chromebooks need web-only replacements for Outlook and Office. It's also a freemium product, because you can pay for gSuite.
- bonsai80 7y ago
  Get people to stay logged in to Google. Then when you do your regular google.com searches, Google knows exactly who you are rather than trying to figure it out for an "anonymous" searcher. I'd guess that alone is worth the cost of operating Gmail for free for everyone.
opencl 7y ago
Has Google made any public statements about whether or not calendar data is used for ad targeting? Gmail was used for ad targeting until mid-2017[1] but I haven't seen anything about calendar. [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...
- ma2rten 7y ago
  Afaik, it was never used for ad targeting so there was no announcement to make. Just think about it for minute. What percentage of people actively use Google Calendar? Out of those what percentage put useful information in there? How much commercial value does this information have?
  - rat9988 7y ago
    Google has to process this data first to know that it's not worth it. Unless you can blind guess?
  - zorpner 7y ago
    How much commercial value does this information have? Enough to make it worth continuing to operate the service, clearly. Do you really want to go down that road?
  - dpcan 7y ago
    Are you serious? If I put "Go fishing" into my calendar for next Monday, Google knows: 1) This person fishes. 2) This person probably buys fishing related products. 3) We know this person lives in X and fishes there, and business Y has a website selling similar products. 4) This person is going fishing on a Monday afternoon (for example) so they are probably off work on Mondays or afternoons. Let's say, I also put in meetings. "Meet with Joe about building a website for his company." 1) This person builds websites 2) Uses hosting services 3) Buys domains 4) Probably codes 5) Must need project management software 6) And all other things typically related to people in this field... Knowing someone's life this intimately is incredibly valuable.
  - 7y ago
jfaat 7y ago
Do you mean other than the ads inside gmail?
- ma2rten 7y ago
  Even ads in gmail are not based on gmail data anymore.
toss1 7y ago
I wouldn't be so sure about that. About 2yrs ago I booked a flight to my relatives for a Christmas trip and pasted the info into my Google calendar. Within hours, I got google calendar notices about not having confirmed my hotel reservation. It was VERY annoying as it was borderline deceptive, presented as if I'd already gone through the whole reservation process but failed to confirm. It was definitely a Google notice, and a Google confirmation process when I clicked through to confirm if I wanted this service. I shut it off as best I could find and told them I wanted no part of any such deceptive marketing, even though I would perhaps have wanted a service that made it clear that I was being offered an option, not a fake reminder. I saw nothing of it since, but then I'd shut it off, so I should have no data. So, it seems that Google has siloed projects that not all employees know about...
- toss1 7y ago
  Seriously, multiple downvotes for an accurate recounting of an observed event contradicting a parent assertion, yet no one provides any new info? I don't expect any upvotes, but what am I missing here? Is there something against posting actual data and events?
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    What you're describing isn't an advertisement, so isn't at all relevant to the discussion. It's well known (and not at all secret) that google will grab upcoming flight info from emails and put it into your calendar. But this info still isn't used for ad targeting.
    - toss1 7y ago
      Thanks for the explanation. However, I was describing the deceptive advertisement that came along with the flight->calendar populating feature (which is fine). The advertisement that Google added to my calendar was an auto-populated fake hotel reservation. It was setup to look as if I'd previously reserved rooms but had simply failed to confirm the final ccard info -- the click-thru literally went straight to the enter ccard info page with my "reservation" prepopulated. This was trying to hijack any other reservation that I might have intended to make (of course it was really obvious to me since we were staying w/relatives). Let's be clear: Adding a "need a hotel?" link to my calendar might be ok. Populating my calendar with an item for a business I've never even contacted is an advertisement. Falsely claiming I've already made a reservation when I've never even contacted the business is a lie. It is a deceptive practice. I was genuinely surprised to see this level of both advertising and deception from Google.
dingo_bat 7y ago
Gmail literally gives me ads related to the email I'm viewing. At least before I started using ad-blocking.
xtracto 7y ago
Reminded me of Microsoft ad back when they introduced Office365 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0
brandmeyer 7y ago
I used to work at Google. Its a big company, composed of almost 10^5 employees today. In my experience, they can be trusted to adhere to the letter of their agreements; no more and no less. That's not as bad as it might sound. Plenty of companies consider their contracts to be far more mutable than Google did while I was there. But it does mean that you can't take any individual employee's word about what they are doing today. Individuals change. Managers change. People come and go. A fundamental part of the company mythos is that you as an individual know more about what goes on in the company than you really do. So unless you are acting in an official capacity to speak for the gmail and calendar teams, you should hush. If the letter of their agreements permits GOOG to use your data for <X> purpose, then as a user of the service you should assume that they are.
- ma2rten 7y ago
  So unless you are acting in an official capacity to speak for the gmail and calendar teams, you should hush. 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...
  - brandmeyer 7y ago
    Thank you for the citation. Nevertheless, I hope that you can clearly see the difference between referring folks to an official company communication, and starting off with "I work at google..." IIRC, there's mandatory annual training about just this sort of thing.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    This linked post doesn't say anything about Google Calendar. It's not necessarily that I doubt you, it's just that the press release is pretty specific that consumer GMail isn't going to be used for ad customization from now on, and it seems like if it was everything in G-Suite that would be mentioned somewhere. I don't suppose there's a list Google maintains anywhere online that shows which of their own products they use to aid with ad targeting?
- 7y ago
ken 7y ago
That's exactly what makes me nervous. Even someone working at Google isn't entirely sure what user data is or isn't sent to other parts of the company for other uses. Plenty of other tech companies have lied, changed their policies, or just plain screwed up. Privacy and security are hard, and everybody has their hands out. As a consumer, there's no way for me to verify anything. As Woz said (sort of), "Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window." When I make a backup to an external FW disk on my desk, or sync my phone with my computer over a USB cable, I know exactly what data is going where. The whole point of The Cloud being a cloud is that we don't know what's happening in it. It's inherent to the architecture. "Trust but verify" minus the "verify".

I work at google. I am pretty sure google calendar data is not used for ads targeting. The same is true for gmail.

diehunde 7y ago

what? true for Gmail?

chipperyman573 7y ago

Then what do they gain from it?

jpalomaki 7y ago
Companies pay €€€ to use it for business. Free version was good introduction. One reason for using Gmail (which is generating ad money) is the integration with calendar. Getting travel bookings automatically in calendar is useful.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ma2rten 7y ago
It's part of the google eco system. It's integrated with android, google assistant, gmail, ... Chromebooks need web-only replacements for Outlook and Office. It's also a freemium product, because you can pay for gSuite.
bonsai80 7y ago
Get people to stay logged in to Google. Then when you do your regular google.com searches, Google knows exactly who you are rather than trying to figure it out for an "anonymous" searcher. I'd guess that alone is worth the cost of operating Gmail for free for everyone.

opencl 7y ago

Has Google made any public statements about whether or not calendar data is used for ad targeting? Gmail was used for ad targeting until mid-2017[1] but I haven't seen anything about calendar. [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...

ma2rten 7y ago
Afaik, it was never used for ad targeting so there was no announcement to make. Just think about it for minute. What percentage of people actively use Google Calendar? Out of those what percentage put useful information in there? How much commercial value does this information have?
- rat9988 7y ago
  Google has to process this data first to know that it's not worth it. Unless you can blind guess?
- zorpner 7y ago
  How much commercial value does this information have? Enough to make it worth continuing to operate the service, clearly. Do you really want to go down that road?
- dpcan 7y ago
  Are you serious? If I put "Go fishing" into my calendar for next Monday, Google knows: 1) This person fishes. 2) This person probably buys fishing related products. 3) We know this person lives in X and fishes there, and business Y has a website selling similar products. 4) This person is going fishing on a Monday afternoon (for example) so they are probably off work on Mondays or afternoons. Let's say, I also put in meetings. "Meet with Joe about building a website for his company." 1) This person builds websites 2) Uses hosting services 3) Buys domains 4) Probably codes 5) Must need project management software 6) And all other things typically related to people in this field... Knowing someone's life this intimately is incredibly valuable.
- 7y ago

jfaat 7y ago

Do you mean other than the ads inside gmail?

ma2rten 7y ago
Even ads in gmail are not based on gmail data anymore.

toss1 7y ago

I wouldn't be so sure about that. About 2yrs ago I booked a flight to my relatives for a Christmas trip and pasted the info into my Google calendar. Within hours, I got google calendar notices about not having confirmed my hotel reservation. It was VERY annoying as it was borderline deceptive, presented as if I'd already gone through the whole reservation process but failed to confirm. It was definitely a Google notice, and a Google confirmation process when I clicked through to confirm if I wanted this service. I shut it off as best I could find and told them I wanted no part of any such deceptive marketing, even though I would perhaps have wanted a service that made it clear that I was being offered an option, not a fake reminder. I saw nothing of it since, but then I'd shut it off, so I should have no data. So, it seems that Google has siloed projects that not all employees know about...

toss1 7y ago
Seriously, multiple downvotes for an accurate recounting of an observed event contradicting a parent assertion, yet no one provides any new info? I don't expect any upvotes, but what am I missing here? Is there something against posting actual data and events?
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  What you're describing isn't an advertisement, so isn't at all relevant to the discussion. It's well known (and not at all secret) that google will grab upcoming flight info from emails and put it into your calendar. But this info still isn't used for ad targeting.
  - toss1 7y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. However, I was describing the deceptive advertisement that came along with the flight->calendar populating feature (which is fine). The advertisement that Google added to my calendar was an auto-populated fake hotel reservation. It was setup to look as if I'd previously reserved rooms but had simply failed to confirm the final ccard info -- the click-thru literally went straight to the enter ccard info page with my "reservation" prepopulated. This was trying to hijack any other reservation that I might have intended to make (of course it was really obvious to me since we were staying w/relatives). Let's be clear: Adding a "need a hotel?" link to my calendar might be ok. Populating my calendar with an item for a business I've never even contacted is an advertisement. Falsely claiming I've already made a reservation when I've never even contacted the business is a lie. It is a deceptive practice. I was genuinely surprised to see this level of both advertising and deception from Google.

dingo_bat 7y ago

Gmail literally gives me ads related to the email I'm viewing. At least before I started using ad-blocking.

xtracto 7y ago

Reminded me of Microsoft ad back when they introduced Office365 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0

brandmeyer 7y ago

I used to work at Google. Its a big company, composed of almost 10^5 employees today. In my experience, they can be trusted to adhere to the letter of their agreements; no more and no less. That's not as bad as it might sound. Plenty of companies consider their contracts to be far more mutable than Google did while I was there. But it does mean that you can't take any individual employee's word about what they are doing today. Individuals change. Managers change. People come and go. A fundamental part of the company mythos is that you as an individual know more about what goes on in the company than you really do. So unless you are acting in an official capacity to speak for the gmail and calendar teams, you should hush. If the letter of their agreements permits GOOG to use your data for <X> purpose, then as a user of the service you should assume that they are.

ma2rten 7y ago
So unless you are acting in an official capacity to speak for the gmail and calendar teams, you should hush. 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...
- brandmeyer 7y ago
  Thank you for the citation. Nevertheless, I hope that you can clearly see the difference between referring folks to an official company communication, and starting off with "I work at google..." IIRC, there's mandatory annual training about just this sort of thing.
- danShumway 7y ago
  This linked post doesn't say anything about Google Calendar. It's not necessarily that I doubt you, it's just that the press release is pretty specific that consumer GMail isn't going to be used for ad customization from now on, and it seems like if it was everything in G-Suite that would be mentioned somewhere. I don't suppose there's a list Google maintains anywhere online that shows which of their own products they use to aid with ad targeting?
7y ago

ken 7y ago

That's exactly what makes me nervous. Even someone working at Google isn't entirely sure what user data is or isn't sent to other parts of the company for other uses. Plenty of other tech companies have lied, changed their policies, or just plain screwed up. Privacy and security are hard, and everybody has their hands out. As a consumer, there's no way for me to verify anything. As Woz said (sort of), "Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window." When I make a backup to an external FW disk on my desk, or sync my phone with my computer over a USB cable, I know exactly what data is going where. The whole point of The Cloud being a cloud is that we don't know what's happening in it. It's inherent to the architecture. "Trust but verify" minus the "verify".