Gmail will stop scanning emails for ad personalization later this year

Some Gmail haters have always claimed that you can't trust Google's email service because it automatically scans the content of your messages in order to personalize the ads it shows you. While this process doesn't involve any humans, a lot of people have been irked by the realization that it is in fact what is going on.

Well, today Google has announced that this email scanning will be retired from the free consumer Gmail service "later this year". So what is basically the most controversial thing about Gmail is going away. Oh, the poor haters, what will they choose to focus on afterwards? That remains to be seen, but we trust that they will be resourceful.

After the change is implemented, Gmail ads will be "in line" with how Google personalizes ads for its other products. The ads you see will be shown based on your settings, which you can switch at any time in your Google account - including to disable ad personalization completely. Google says Gmail has more than 1.2 billion users, and in the future add-ons will enable things such as payments and invoicing directly within the email service.

Source | Via