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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

#261

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

ouid wrote: post #107
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.

Let's split the difference. It's like your accountant preparing your tax return in exchange for using that tax return to develop a model of your spending habits. The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing your tax returns, and in fact is such that if you were simply to collect that data yourself, sell it on the open market, and spend a portion of the proceeds on the tax prep service, you would end up…

No way that's true. The data is not worth as much as the eyeball on the ad itself.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#262

Post by tzs »

jikeo wrote: post #164

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems weird that the reporter nor any of the 140+ comments so far seemingly don't mention the recently published proposal for a new ePrivacy directive in the EU that will make it a lot harder for Google to scan e-mails in the first place. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-idUSKBN14U1FL https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-... http://www.kempli…

Wouldn't Google be able to largely mitigate the effects of that if they wanted to by making it so accounts that do not consent to the scanning get smaller mailboxes or do not get spam filtering or something like that? I'd expect that would get most of its users to consent.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#263

Post by sebastian »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #62
VMG wrote: post #6

Hope this increases the chance of E2E encryption

How would you search your inbox? Or filter spam?

Some type of proof‐of‐work for email addresses that have not been previously white-listed. Similar to what BitMessage does[1].

Sending emails to new/random contacts shouldn't be that easy anyway.

[1] https://bitmessage.org/bitmessage.pdf

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#264

Post by literallycancer »

EGreg wrote: post #127
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.

I don't understand why seeing an ad is so bad. So a sleazy salesman is more annoying because they are in your way. But if you're going to see ads anyway, I'd rather they be relevant!! Can soemone explain why given that there will be ads either way they actually prefer irrelevant ads?

Would you prefer the party trying to trick you into buying crap you don't need to have more or less information about you?

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#265

Post by fserb »

dingaling wrote: post #48
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...

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.

if you accountant was a computer.

We have to stop this madness of thinking that "John READS my diary" means the same thing as "The function fread() READS nitems objects". Those don't mean the same thing except in a metaphorical sense. It's insane.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#266

Post by slewis »

md_ wrote: post #243
ouid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's split the difference. It's like your accountant preparing your tax return in exchange for using that tax return to develop a model of your spending habits. The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing your tax returns, and in fact is such that if you were simply to collect that data yourself, sell it on the open market, and spend a portion of the proceeds on the tax prep service, you would end up…

> if you were simply to collect that data yourself, sell it on the open market, and spend a portion of the proceeds on the tax prep service, you would end up with profit Hmm. Could you sell it on the open market? If so--if the margins for the ad-supported model like Google's are in fact as big as they appear--why isn't there a Google competitor who provides exactly the service you describe: some kind of opt-in system…

Take a look at Basic Attention Token and the Brave browser.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#267

Post by aleem »

jikeo wrote: post #164

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems weird that the reporter nor any of the 140+ comments so far seemingly don't mention the recently published proposal for a new ePrivacy directive in the EU that will make it a lot harder for Google to scan e-mails in the first place. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-idUSKBN14U1FL https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-... http://www.kempli…

The industry at large and Apple in particular is coming at them from the other direction preferring premium, furthering ad blockers and offering better privacy defaults (iOS 11). Elon Musk has gone so far as to allude that Google is the only AI company that worries him[1].

And so it goes. Coupled with AI and the amount of data they are able to feed into the AI engines, I am guessing this won't regress their ad targeting.

They have also managed to supplant it with other avenues. Google Travel, Google Calendar and other apps have explicit permission to read your email, Google serves email images off their own servers which gives them a tracking beacon and behavioural data across cohorts. All this adds a level of indirection but still gives them access to behavioural data and user intent.

[1] http://www.androidauthority.com/elon-musk-on-ai-696198/

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#268

Post by fullshark »

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...

Users like spam filtering, don't like ads.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#270

Post by morganvachon »

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 problem is that it's not just your email. If you send an email to a Gmail user, Google is now building a profile on you (or was until this move) as well as your recipient. Did you give explicit consent to Google? Did you sign a EULA or SLA with them allowing this? No, they just did it anyway. Even someone who makes a point to keep themselves off of Google's radar will end up indexed and sold to the highest bidder if they send even one innocent email to a Gmail user.
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