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Google has announced that it will stop scanning inboxes of Gmail’s free users for ad personalisation at some point later in 2017.
The business users, who subscribe to its G Suite services, are free from Google’s interference. However, until now, it routinely scanned the inboxes of its free users to better target ads for them. It then combined that information with everything else it knows about its users to build its advertising profile for them.
Ads shown are based on users' settings. Users can change those settings at any time, including disabling ads personalisation. G Suite will continue to be ad free, Google highlighted via its blog on Friday.
Are we surprised that Google doesn’t need Gmail to be its guinea pig to accrue data from users anymore? Not really, they already have more than they could have asked for.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)