Big Brother And Gmail Emails

Sunday, 24. January 2010

Whilst this has little to do with vehicle finance I read with interest the way that Google withdrew from China as a result of the Chinese government hacking into Chinese user’s emails and other online information in order to control the way that its citizens think and act. I then read that Google have found a new way to monetize emails. Most of us are aware of adwords, these are the sponsored ads that appear when you carry out a Google search at the top of the search results and down the side of the page. If you click on the ad the advertiser has to pay Google a rate per click, the more he agrees to pay per click the higher up the list the ad appears. Well you may be surprised to learn that if you have a Gmail account you will now see targeted ads appear on emails that you send. So lets say you are writing to a friend and mention that you are considering buying an iphone, surprise surprise suddenly ads appear on your email for sellers of iphones. Or if you mention that you can’t stand your husband and am thinking of getting a divorce, suddenly ads appear for divorce lawyers and probably dating sites! Think this isn’t serious, check this out: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6603 By Graham Hill