Until now, Google has scanned the emails of the users of its free Gmail service to better target ads to them.
“Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change,” wrote Google Cloud senior vice president Diane Greene in a blog post.
“This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products.
Ads shown are based on users’ settings. Users can change those settings at any time, including disabling ads personalization.”
But this doesn’t mean Google will stop showing ads in Gmail. Reports say it instead means Google will rely on information gleaned from other sources like search and YouTube.
The blog post noted G Suite, the division of Google Cloud that includes apps like Gmail, Docs, Drive and Calendar for corporate users, will remain ad free.
And, according to Greene, G Suite’s Gmail is not used as input for ad personalization and Google simply decided to follow suit with its free consumer Gmail service.
Reports indicate the move is also likely because Google wants to sign up more corporate customers and make itself more competitive against players like Microsoft Office.
TechCrunch even surmises that because Google already knows a lot about all of its users, it might not need the additional information from Gmail.
Greene said G Suite usage has more than doubled in the past year among large businesses and it now has more than 3m paying companies that use G Suite.
Gmail has more than 1.2 billion users.