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I may the only greybeard arund here who remembers (and has the screenshots to prove it), used to be from 2005--2008 when you would open a message in Gmail, all

I may the only greybeard arund here who remembers (and has the screenshots to prove it), used to be from 2005--2008 when you would open a message in Gmail, all of the sponsored ads would show up over on the right-hand-side of your email message, and would all be related to keywords from the inside of the email. Making it grotesquely blatant, how very much the Google computers were reading all your email. At least now they conceal it a little better, by storing your keyword/interests in a giant permanent database, then bringing the advertisements up on other, non-Google pages!

dpark 5y ago
Didn’t they announce that they stopped scanning email for ad purposes? (Presumably because it wasn’t actually very lucrative.)
- passivate 5y ago
  Is there any user data that passes through Google owned servers that DOESN'T get data mined?
  - dpark 5y ago
    That’s literally not possible for me to answer. They did say they aren’t scanning email for advertising purposes anymore though. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513/google-says-it-will-no-longer-read-users-emails-to-sell-targeted-ads https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513...
- rurp 5y ago
  Eh, sort of. They released a statement to give that impression but the wording was fairly weasely. They likely stopped using email content for directly targeting ads in Gmail, but there's almost no chance email content isn't being used to target people in other contexts.
  - dpark 5y ago
    Why is there “almost no chance”? They said they won’t email for advertising purposes. There wasn’t much wiggle room with the way they phrased it. It’s possible that they outright lied, I guess. “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...
    - beeboop 5y ago
      "content" perhaps doesn't include metadata
marcosdumay 5y ago
Yeah, I quite liked the contextual ads and did go to Google many times just to look at the ads, ignoring the rest of the contents (not only for gmail, for search too). When they started with the permanent database, the ads immediately got useless.
the_biot 5y ago
IIRC Google was clear about this even when they launched Gmail: they were doing it so they could read your emails and use that info to add to your ad profile. I couldn't even *believe* at the time why anyone would sign up for that. Still can't believe it.
- reidjs 5y ago
  "I have nothing to hide"

dpark 5y ago

Didn’t they announce that they stopped scanning email for ad purposes? (Presumably because it wasn’t actually very lucrative.)

passivate 5y ago
Is there any user data that passes through Google owned servers that DOESN'T get data mined?
- dpark 5y ago
  That’s literally not possible for me to answer. They did say they aren’t scanning email for advertising purposes anymore though. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513/google-says-it-will-no-longer-read-users-emails-to-sell-targeted-ads https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513...
rurp 5y ago
Eh, sort of. They released a statement to give that impression but the wording was fairly weasely. They likely stopped using email content for directly targeting ads in Gmail, but there's almost no chance email content isn't being used to target people in other contexts.
- dpark 5y ago
  Why is there “almost no chance”? They said they won’t email for advertising purposes. There wasn’t much wiggle room with the way they phrased it. It’s possible that they outright lied, I guess. “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...
  - beeboop 5y ago
    "content" perhaps doesn't include metadata

marcosdumay 5y ago

Yeah, I quite liked the contextual ads and did go to Google many times just to look at the ads, ignoring the rest of the contents (not only for gmail, for search too). When they started with the permanent database, the ads immediately got useless.

the_biot 5y ago

IIRC Google was clear about this even when they launched Gmail: they were doing it so they could read your emails and use that info to add to your ad profile. I couldn't even *believe* at the time why anyone would sign up for that. Still can't believe it.

reidjs 5y ago
"I have nothing to hide"