Don’t Get Scroogled By Gmail-What is It?

“Don’t Get Scroogled by Gmail”-The campaign started by Microsoft aimed at making Gmail users aware about Google’s practice of going through every email to target keywords for paid ads.

Microsoft claims “Outlook.com is Different”. It understands confidentiality of every email and prioritizes privacy of user mail account. Microsoft promotes petition against Gmail at Scroogled.com, encouraging users to move to Outlook.

So, How Google Uses Email Content for Paid Ads…

Ever noticed that advertisements in the right side of an email are related to what you share in emails, about what you talk in email? For example:

 

Basically, what Google do is it goes through every email that is being sent and received. It checks out mails for keywords (like in the above example its ‘high cholesterol’, ‘divorce’) that it could utilize to promote paid advertisements.

Privacy Policy Of Google Says…

 

What Google Has to Say…?

“Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient’s ECS provider in the course of delivery. Indeed, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”

Google says that emails of users pass through their Server and it is obvious that they read it. It explains this with a scenario that if you send a letter to a colleague, then it is possible that his assistant is reading it.

What is Actually Happening… Although Microsoft and Google are long time rivals but the campaign called ‘Google Scroogled’ has added fuel to the fire. On one side where Microsoft is trying to show the negative side of Google mail service-‘The Gmail’, it is trying to take benefit out of the campaign by promoting its own Web Mail service ‘Outlook.com’’.