There was a lot of discussion and concern among people before 2017 when GmailTM (Google Inc) used to scan email content to deliver targeted advertisements. One can wonder why is that such a big deal. Doesn’t a lot of what we do online actually get”read” by Google or other companies?
Gmail has offered unmatched email services and hosting for individuals but many thinkers had criticized the service while some tech geeks applauded the rise of generating “contextually aware ads” in email.
Indeed it is. The only difference was the contents were sent by someone else and hence it involved what hundreds of others were also doing (writing secret stuff to that one person!). I think this issue really needed to be side-stepped when Google wanted to build a robust cloud architecture with corporate client offerings (which eventually became Google Workspace) that offer paid services to organizations. Now, people in an organization cared about business secrets (?) which became a conflict. This was handled Google’s cloud division possibly with the task of building trust among organizations so that they shift to Google Cloud with Gmail integrated as an organization email service.
So, in a way, the concerns possibly came from its rising business offerings (enterprise solutions) which was one of the dominant earned service revenue streams – not necessarily because of regular individuals. However, due to this individuals also get the same treatment.
Google is now clear: See ‘How Gmail ads work’
On Google’s support page, it reads: “When you open Gmail, you’ll see ads that were selected to show you the most useful and relevant ads. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you’re signed into Google. We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads.” [emphasis added by me]. The observation of an explicit statement like this shows how big such an issue is . Infact, many open source and academic email services sell with a USP as they do not scan emails. This gets manyfold when you step forward into diversity of individual backgrounds. The support page thus also explicitly touches upon possibly sensitive personal information and says it does not serve targeted ads based on race, religion, sexual orientation, health, or sensitive financial categories.
However, the psychological question remains: Why would ads in email bother users more than other targeted advertising found across the web which is also based on ‘reading’ what one is searching for?
A growing body of behavioral science about privacy has argued, among other things, a cause fo big concern is people’s uncertainty about the consequences of privacy‐related behaviors – which in this case sounds like someone (okay, a machine) reading all my emails. It is as-if I am being watched. Perhaps the uncertainty escalates beyond what I search.
What more can you do? Well, if you are deeply concerned about ‘being watched to serve ads’, then Gmail also gives you the option to switch off personalization completely. You would still see ads but not based on what you have done online (or skeptically on other Google platforms). But would you do so? Ads will come nevertheless – but there is a tradeoff. Switching off personalization is like searching for homestays in the Himalayas the whole day but being served ads about organic fertilizers. Hurray! Nobody knows what I searched on Internet today. But, is it worse to see stuff I might not even care about? This precise tradeoff between privacy and relevance raises questions about the affective valuation of information versus informational privacy – a fundamental problem of the past ad future of digital advertisements driving free service offerings.