Google wants to use your Gmail and Google Photos to serve personalised ads. That is clear from a change to its privacy policy.
Google wants to show personalised ads based on your Gmail and Google Photos, according to a revised privacy policy spotted by Android Authority. The policy initially stated that personalised ads are not based on content in Gmail, Drive and Photos. It now adds that this is the case unless you yourself choose to make this data from the apps available to other Google services that do not support personalised ads.
That the tech giant is not shy of user data and likes to use it for commercial purposes is nothing new. The company recently received a fine of 403 million euros for violating location privacy.
Personal Intelligence
“We don’t show you personalised ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail or Photos,” according to the document. Google adds the following nuance: “unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalised ads”.
More specifically, this concerns Personal Intelligence, a feature in Gemini that gives the AI assistant access to your own Google data so that its answers are tailored to you. When you enable the feature, it links information from apps such as Gmail, Google Search and Google Photos, and Gemini can then use that data in conversations with you.
The feature is disabled by default and has existed in the US for some time. That this data can now also be used for ads is new. Personal Intelligence is not yet available in Belgium, but it is in the US. The question is whether and when it will come to Europe.