Now Google says it might use your Gmail and Google Photos data to target ads

> About DMA & your linked services

> The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a European Union (EU) law that took effect on March 6, 2024. As a result of Article 5(2) of the DMA, in the EU, Google offers you the choice to link certain Google services.

> Those Google services include:

    Search
    YouTube
    Ad services
    Google Play
    Chrome
    Google Shopping
    Google Maps

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/14202510?hl=en

So at least European users will be able to get personalized search and photos results without also having to share that data for personalized ads.

PSA: Getting out of Google Photos is both easy and super rewarding if you can run Immich and use Google Takeout. It’s also better than Google Photos.

https://jaisenmathai.com/articles/my-ridiculously-robust-pho...

Turn it off here: https://google.com/search-personalization

"might" === "absolutely will", just for the record.

Since the comments are going to be flooded with people reactively assuming it is straight up directly accessing them, here is the actual qualification:

> [they will not use for ads] ... unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads

So it is more reasonable than I think most people are assuming.

If anything I am surprised they haven’t done this till now. When they gave no option to opt out of having our Gemini chats to not be used for training it was clear Google took a turn to be bold and aggressive about using user data. It was the sign to move away

All I can add is that I'm very glad that I've no Google accounts nor use its services even though I've an Android phone.

> Google won’t show you ads based on sensitive categories like race, sexual orientation, religion, or health.

Conspicuously absent from the "sensitive categories" is political leanings...

Just de-Google yourself and your family. It’s long past time.

Ente Photos is the best alternative imo. It's super polished, lets you self-host, and is E2EE.

The Gmail man!

https://youtu.be/oR4jTvxPruw?si=CMtmM5_irok8qUBe

Jokes on them, I don't see ads anymore. I even have ads stripped out of podcasts I listen to.

They weren't already?!

Good job I never use it then.

I just assume that everything you put into Google is used for ads.

Google privacy policy is an absolute joke so this is hardly surprising. Pretty much everything gets used for model training. It’s hard to find options that respect your privacy without studying 50 support docs pages. Plus they conflate anonymization with privacy, as if ripping off someone’s data becomes OK as long as you … take their name off em

I've noticed now that google is cf negative, search might as well be called google billboard. they are admaxxing everything for as much rev as possible. its terrible, and i often use perplexity and chat in lieu of google search. as a matter of fact i find perplexity often produces much better results.

Advertising is the root of all evil.

Driver of overconsumption.

Keeping us hooked on social media feeds.

Targeting children, making them use addictive products.

Making everything more expensive (because we are paying for the ads eventually).

Collecting our data.

...

I am extremely surprised, because I thought Google was already doing that.

Gmail has already been targeted from day 1!

Here's an idea: Targeted ads against workers of companies who buy digital ads. Drown them in content with influencers showing that digital ads have awful returns, and frankly, only people with small genitals decide to buy campaigns.

You've gotta be able to actually show me ads before you can target me with ads.

The implication here is that all your emails in GMail will be thoroughly analysed by LLMs.

Another reason to throw on the pile of needing to setup a new domain to self-host email on, properly planned with 'alias per login' etc.

I'm not sure if the pile is big enough yet to make me do it, but it's getting there.

I might have to have two domains, one for critical communications and logins (banking, finances, tax, etc) and another for all those bullshit web sign ups. Ironically, it's the critical one I'd have to setup 9n a centralised SaaS (and therefore prone to such shenanigans as Google is proposing) in order to make sure communications don't get lost. Having said that, my current Google-hosted domain is free, and so it's likely been used for advertising and AI training already.

I dumped Google years ago because I saw this, among other enshitification, was inevitable. Never looked back. Life is good.

Friendly reminder when you click a link in a Gmail message, Google's servers also make a separate HTTP request for that link.

For your safety I'm sure.

targeted ads are fine if they are actually relevant

Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-personal-intelligenc...

All of this so predictable and so disappointing. But there’s nothing to do but accept it.

The enshitification of Google is inevitable. It went from all the space you ever need for your email to "you are at 93% usage. Upgrade to premium" in just a few years.

Well, if we didn't have corrupt regulators, Google would have been fined out of existence ages ago.

That said it will be interesting way of exploitation. If you want to find people who have certain email content, you can serve them ads manipulating them into taking an action. Like buying a scam product / malware.

So? what's the harm? At least I'll see targeted ads; ads that I would actually care about and not random ads. Yeah, these big tech companies track us. It's old now. When the product is free, you are the product. Same old, same old. Tell me something new.

Anyone surprised?

Evil has a name. It begins with 'G' and ends with 'oogle'.

Hopefully you folks don't share information that is or was critical to your business or family there. Big Brother may be watching. The name is also Google.

There is so much information you shared there, if you used it, that can be used for AI sniffing. This is the new future.

As if it did not for all those years.

srsly ppl

Awesome.

Most of my photos (hundreds and hundreds of them) from the past week are of shitty untidy black spaghetti network racks that are completely beyond all saving and frankly require the building to be flattened and everything rebuilt from scratch.

So if this can help a company find a way to advertise a clean and humane way of solving this problem that doesn't involve me tracking down and deep frying the network engineer that left this unholy mess, then quite frankly I'm all for it any my cash is waiting.

Google's always done this, it's the entire reason Gmail exists. Now they're just saying it.

"might"

Now Google says that it has no values, no respect, and no fear.