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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html
Google plans to abandon its longstanding practice of scanning user email in its Gmail service to serve targeted advertising.
Google said it does not scan the email of paying corporate customers of its G Suite of services, but it made the policy change — announced in a company blog post on Friday — on its free consumer version to eliminate confusion and create one uniform policy toward Gmail.
As it builds its Google Cloud business for selling internet infrastructure and services to corporate customers, Google is trying to ease concerns that it will use data from corporate customers to help its mainstay advertising business.
Google said it plans to carry out the changes to the Gmail ad policy "later this year." It will continue to scan Gmail to screen for potential spam or phishing attacks as well as offering suggestions for automated replies to email.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 24 2017, @05:45PM (4 children)
They aren't going to scan for advertising but still for spam and calendar loading and other services. There goes the business model.
I suspect they found less and less useful advertising advantage in email compared to what they find in searches and browsing history. Plus, unless you use the web interface you never see any ads in Gmail anyway because their spam filters are so good.
With most people reading email on mobile devices, where no ads appear, the scanning was useless.
So I'm guessing this was a case of deminishing returns, with no revenue generation.
I'm also guessing the days of free Gmail with 15 gig of storage may be numbered. That much history sewved the need of very few regular users, and probably was becoming something of a warrant magnet.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday June 24 2017, @05:54PM
I like your analysis, and suspect it is pretty close to optimal, especially cost....
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday June 24 2017, @10:56PM
As long as it stays free I'll keep my accounts even if the storage drops to 15 bytes - they're the ones I give when I'm not interested in receiving emails.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @12:17AM
> ...free Gmail with 15 gig of storage may be numbered. That much history sewved the need of very few regular users...
I guess we know different Gmail users, I know several people that use a significant chunk of that storage. One of them pays Gmail a small amount monthly for more storage. For me, the attraction to leaving email on Gmail is the built-in search capability which is amazingly quick. Of course, I have my important/business stuff backed up on my own systems.
(Score: 2) by termigator on Sunday June 25 2017, @06:49PM
If you have a browser that allows you to define custom CSS for sites, you can hide the ads in the web interface.
I think the decision by Google is to simplify the maintenance of the gmail service: reducing variability in the service between free and paying customers. Since many people use apps to access gmail, which do not show ads, it likely costs more to maintain the differences in the service than what is obtained from ad revenue.