Skip to main content

Google settles lawsuit over its ad-targeting practices in Gmail

google shops best buy shop
TechCrunch
Google will now scan your emails for information relevant to advertising just a bit slower thanks to a settlement of a case pending in a Northern California district court. The system will now scan those emails after they’re available in the recipient’s Gmail mailbox, in contrast to Google’s prior practice, where the email was scanned during the delivery process.

Since each email message is scanned to deliver more relevant ads, the process meant that non-Gmail accounts were indirectly being cataloged as well. The plaintiffs in the case, which was styled Matera vs. Google, argued that this was a violation of both the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the California Information Privacy Act, calling the strategy “the twenty-first-century equivalent of AT&T eavesdropping on each of its customers’ phone conversations, or of the postal service taking information from private correspondence.”

Recommended Videos

Instead of fight the case, Google agreed to change how it scans these emails — although scans for spam and malware would still occur during the delivery process as occurred before. The change will be seamless to customers, as it literally is a matter of milliseconds in processing time.

It’s not clear whether Google was receiving any material benefit from the strategy — i.e. data from those non-Gmail users being used to serve more relevant ads across Google’s widespread ad network. It also agreed to pay any legal costs related to the case and make a one-time payment of $2,000 to each of the class representatives.

Other ad providers have not been so lucky. Yahoo was forced to settle over similar issues with its email-related ad-targeting practices, but ended up paying close to twice what Google had to in legal costs (about $4 million).

Google declined to comment on the settlement, but offered that its efforts would result in concrete technical changes. Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.

Ed Oswald
For fifteen years, Ed has written about the latest and greatest in gadgets and technology trends. At Digital Trends, he's…
The Google Pixel 8a’s 6 biggest upgrades over the Pixel 7a
Pixel 7a back.

The Google Pixel 8a has just launched, and it comes with many upgrades that Pixel fans have been hoping for. These include some attractive new design flourishes, beefed-up hardware, a longer-lasting battery, and a higher-end display. You also get all the software features that make the Pixel series so appealing, including seven years of OS and security updates and Gemini Nano for more AI features.

But how does all of this compare to the already great Pixel 7a? Here’s a breakdown of the Google Pixel 8a’s six biggest upgrades over the Pixel 7a. For a closer look at all of the differences between the two phones, see our Pixel 8a vs. Pixel 7a comparison.
The Tensor G3 chip

Read more
Google just settled a $5B privacy suit involving Chrome browser
The Google Chrome logo on a smartphone.

Google has agreed to settle a $5 billion lawsuit brought by claimants who accused the web giant of privacy invasion by tracking their online activities despite being in “incognito mode” when using the company’s Chrome browser.

After lawyers announced on Thursday that they’d reached a preliminary agreement, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers put a scheduled trial for the case in California on hold, Reuters reported.

Read more
Fake AI images are showing up in Google search — and it’s a problem
An AI-generated image of a famous Hawaiian singer.

Right now, if you type "Israel Kamakawiwoʻole" into Google search, you don't see one of the singer's famous album covers, or an image of him performing one of his songs on his iconic ukulele. What you see first is an image of a man sitting on a beach with a smile on his face -- but not a photo of the man himself taken with a camera. This is fake photo generated by AI. In fact, when you click on the image, it takes you to the Midjourney subreddit, where the series of images were initially posted.

I saw this first posted by Ethan Mollick on X (formerly known as Twitter), a professor at Wharton who is studying AI.

Read more