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Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

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Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#141

Post by cpeterso »

ouid wrote: post #129
dmix wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing your tax returns It's likely the value Google got out of scanning your email wasn't worth that much in terms of modelling profiles for ads. Probably because having both your search history and "anonymized" Google analytics, plus the sea of data that comes from owning Android is more than enough data that Google/Doubleclick needs. From a purely capitalist p…

I disagree with you, but from the perspective that my email contains the history of every transaction I have ever made, all of the newsletters I sign up to, and, for another 3 days, ~50% of my conversations, since I do a good chunk of my communicating over gChat. Consumer preferences change over time, so google is far more interested in the thing I bought yesterday than the thing I bought 4 months ago, so being able…

Amazon's receipt emails stopped including an itemized breakdown. Perhaps this is for customer privacy or perhaps so Google can no longer scrape Gmail users' purchase histories.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#142

Post by luhn »

cookiecaper wrote: post #79
skrause wrote: post #33

I never understood the argument that some automatic scanning for keywords is like "reading" your mail. By that same logic isn't Gmail's spam filter still "reading" your mail? It is classifying your mail based on content after all...

The spam filter is [assumed to be] transient/generalized. While a user may set special tuning parameters to classify what they consider "junk", this probably reveals more about the inadequacy of the spam filter than it does about the user. On the other hand, a program which analyzes mail to ascertain the tastes, interests, and personal plans of the participants is mining much more sensitive data, and it's compiling/s…

> Google stores this forever and they'll say "Ah, we know this guy was talking about marriage 10 years ago; traditionally, marriages fail after 5 years, we've detected a tense tone in his mails to his wife, BEEP BOP BOOP, DIVORCE LAWYER AD IS RELEVANT".

Have you actually seen anything like this? In my experience the ad targeting seems like extremely shallow keyword analysis.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#143

Post by [deleted] »

roywiggins wrote: post #57
skrause wrote: post #33

I never understood the argument that some automatic scanning for keywords is like "reading" your mail. By that same logic isn't Gmail's spam filter still "reading" your mail? It is classifying your mail based on content after all...

The spam filter is for my benefit, but scanning for ad keywords is designed to benefit someone else, not me.

[deleted]

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#144

Post by jpeg_hero »

isomorphic wrote: post #134
cybrjoe wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like your accountant preparing your tax return for free in exchange for aggregating data about your receipts and offering you goods and services you may be interested in.

> offering you goods and services you may be interested in The thing is: never, not even once, has Google offered me an ad with goods and services I was interested in.

ok, maybe Gmail ads have been irrelevant to you. but surely you've done a google search and been presented with interesting goods and services?!?!

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#145

Post by ksk »

skrause wrote: post #33

I never understood the argument that some automatic scanning for keywords is like "reading" your mail. By that same logic isn't Gmail's spam filter still "reading" your mail? It is classifying your mail based on content after all...

Does the automated nature of the permanent data collection change anything? How about an automated drone with a camera mounted on it that follows you everywhere and records every action, indefinitely, purely automated ofcource, so that an advertising company can helpfully remind you about the awesome great $6 lunch menu when you walk past McBurger at lunchtime, or about picking up some hemorrhoids cream from MediCo because a machine learning algorithm saw you scratch your butt and deduced something.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#146

Post by sigjuice »

RichLewis007 wrote: post #11

It's about time! I wonder if this is due to the fact that if email encryption becomes common, the content will be inaccessible to Google anyway.

How many people have you seen who exchange encrypted email on a regular basis (or even at all)?

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#147

Post by gitlabuser »

cybrjoe wrote: post #72
dingaling wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like my accountant reading my receipts to create my tax return versus a sleazy salesman sneaking a peek at them to find new ways to sell me stuff.

It's more like your accountant preparing your tax return for free in exchange for aggregating data about your receipts and offering you goods and services you may be interested in.

Here's a real life example. It's like Credit Karma who prepares your tax return for free, but then uses the info to help target you for ads on credit cards, loans, etc.

[this is exactly happening]

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#148

Post by siliconc0w »

I think there is some interesting middle ground where you could use machine learning to go from 'show only relevant ads' to 'show only ads you might actually click on with greater than .001 probability'. I guess this is like 'extreme' outlier detection but it'd be interesting to see what revenue the ads at the 'long tail' of likelihood generate anyway. My guess the bulk of it is from the standard high CPC stuff like Mortages and Insurance. Google says it does this but i'm not too sure - I've never intentionally clicked an adword and yet they're still shown to me.

Anyway this may solve the tragedy of the commons situation we're in now and allow us to move away from the technology war of ad blockers, ad blocker blockers, ad blocker blocker blockers, etc.

edit: removed comment on clarity of Gsuite vs Free due to downvote brigade.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#149

Post by rory096 »

siliconc0w wrote: post #148

I think there is some interesting middle ground where you could use machine learning to go from 'show only relevant ads' to 'show only ads you might actually click on with greater than .001 probability'. I guess this is like 'extreme' outlier detection but it'd be interesting to see what revenue the ads at the 'long tail' of likelihood generate anyway. My guess the bulk of it is from the standard high CPC stuff like…

Seems pretty clear to me. GSuite never had email scanning.

>Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud sells a package of office software, called G Suite, that competes with market leader Microsoft Corp. Paying Gmail users never received the email-scanning ads like the free version of the program, but some business customers were confused by the distinction and its privacy implications, said Diane Greene, Google’s senior vice president of cloud. “What we’re going to do is make it unambiguous,” she said.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#150

Post by guyzero »

siliconc0w wrote: post #148

I think there is some interesting middle ground where you could use machine learning to go from 'show only relevant ads' to 'show only ads you might actually click on with greater than .001 probability'. I guess this is like 'extreme' outlier detection but it'd be interesting to see what revenue the ads at the 'long tail' of likelihood generate anyway. My guess the bulk of it is from the standard high CPC stuff like…

Per Diane Greene's post, this has always been the case for GSuite and now consumer Gmail will catch up:

"Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change"

https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

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