Google had taken a giant leap way back in 20111-12 with its big decision of including data and information in Gmail for various purposes. One of these was to use the information of free consumer Gmail to target personalized ads. A lot of eyebrows were raised due do Google’s peeking into personal mail boxes.
However, the search giant recently announced on Friday June 23rd 2017 that it will no more scan users’ Gmail inboxes to personalize ads. The enterprise version of Gmail, found in G Suite, was not scanned by Google for the purposes. However, the company has decided to align the consumer version more closely with its enterprise version by stopping peeking into the personal mails of free users.
Google will continue displaying ads in the consumer version of Gmail. However, once the change is rolled out, the ads will be less targeted. The company will now show ads to the users based on their activities on other Google sites and those of its partners.
Gmail is the predominant email service provider in the world with more than 1.2 billion users and promises G Suite customers and free consumer Gmail users that it will ensure privacy and security of their information as they continue to innovate. Users can control the information that they share with Google at myaccount.google.com.
This is going to effect the marketers more than the users. Digital marketers have been relying greatly on these information to promote their products and services online. However, this decision of Google is definitely going to bring some big changes.
