Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG,NASDAQ:GOOGL) announced that it will stop reading your emails.
The company has been taking part in a practice where it reads your emails in order to determine what ads to push your way as Google makes a large chunk of its revenue — 88% — from ads. Hopefully, eliminating this practice will make your Gmail experience less creepy moving forward.
Google announced the move in a blog post that noted the changes are coming to Gmail only. Ads will now be targeted to users based on their account settings, which can be controlled by users.
The following message reads on your ads settings page on Gmail: “Remove topics you don’t like and add ones you do to make the ads you see more useful to you. Topics will also be added as you use some Google services (ex: when you watch a video on YouTube). We’re working to include topics from other Google services,” it reads, followed by a list of topics you can choose from.
“This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products,” wrote Diane Greene, Google’s senior vice president of Google Cloud.
The company has yet to unveil when exactly these changes are taking place, but hopefully it’ll be sooner rather than later.
GOOG stock fell 0.8% Monday, while GOOGL shares declined 0.9%.
