> As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. This is something you can opt out of (to some extent with privacy controls, otherwise with logging out).
Except adwords is in this mix. This makes it one step closer (or is it already upon us?) for ads to be targeted to me based on the contents of emails I send and receive.
To me, email is one of the more personal and private things that I do online and even the possibility that Google will use my gmail account to target ads is too much.
edit: perhaps I should clarify – as I understand it, the ads that are currently displayed are relevant only to the email on screen when using gmail's web interface. What I meant was that SPYW opens the door to ads everywhere targeted based on the contents of all of my email. I don't believe that Google does that currently, but I have every reason to expect it's coming. And that bothers me.
any time I read an email in gmail, I look to the right and I see adsense. it's been there for as long as I can remember. I always assumed that what you are describing might happen already has since it's rather obvious that the ads are trying to be somewhat relevant to the email I'm reading. Is it somehow worse because it shows up on your search results page too?
Except adwords is in this mix. This makes it one step closer (or is it already upon us?) for ads to be targeted to me based on the contents of emails I send and receive.
To me, email is one of the more personal and private things that I do online and even the possibility that Google will use my gmail account to target ads is too much.
edit: perhaps I should clarify – as I understand it, the ads that are currently displayed are relevant only to the email on screen when using gmail's web interface. What I meant was that SPYW opens the door to ads everywhere targeted based on the contents of all of my email. I don't believe that Google does that currently, but I have every reason to expect it's coming. And that bothers me.