Silicon Valley giant Google said it will stop scanning its users’ personal email accounts to deliver targeted advertising.
In a blog post on Friday, Google Cloud SVP, Diane Greene, said G Suite’s Gmail is already not used as input for ads personalisation, and Google will follow suit later this year with the free Gmail service.
G Suite is gaining traction among enterprise users with usage more than doubling in the past year among businesses with more than 3 million paying companies using G Suite.
“This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalise ads for other Google products,” said Greene. “Ads are shown based on users’ settings. Users can change the settings at any time, including disabling ads personalisation. G Suite will continue to be ad free.”
Meanwhile, Greene claimed that no other email service protects its users from spam, hacking and phishing as successfully as Gmail, which now has more than 1.2 billion users.
“By indicating possible email responses, Gmail features like Smart Reply making emailing easier, faster, and more efficient. Gmail add-ons will enable features like payments and invoicing directly within Gmail, further revolutionising what can be accomplished in email,” Greene said.
“G Suite customers and free consumer Gmail users can remain confident that Google will keep privacy and security paramount as we continue to innovate. As ever, users can control the information they share with Google at myaccount.google.com,” she said.
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