The ads you see in Gmail are targeted to you. Google does that by scanning the contents of your email. The practice has long been the center of controversy and Google has finally decided to do away with it. The company has confirmed in a post on its official blog that it’s no longer going to scan the email contents of Gmail users for the purpose of selling targeted advertising.
Google has been doing this almost since it launched its email service. It does give users the option to opt out of targeted advertising. The company also limits this to personal Gmail accounts and doesn’t scan contents of corporate Gmail accounts.
The chief of Google’s cloud division Diane Greene told Financial Times that even though this practice doesn’t apply to corporate accounts, it has still made it difficult for the company to find and retain corporate clients for its cloud services business.
Potential clients are often confused about Google’s business tactics and are therefore apprehensive about trusting it with their sensitive information.
“Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change. This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products,” Greene wrote in the post.
This obviously doesn’t mean that you will no longer see ads in Gmail. They will be targeted based on Chrome activity, search history, YouTube browsing for those who are signed into their Gmail account.