[mithr]

The sentence right before the one you quoted is

> When you open Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to show you the most useful and relevant ads. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated.

They created that page in order to highlight that there are no humans reading your mail, but OP's point that "it allows them insight into people's communication which they can then leverage with search and ad networking to make way more than they could simply selling email services" is still true to this day. It's just that it's all automated.

[username90]

No, read the next sentences:

> These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google. We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads.

They don't scan your emails for ads, they use your search history etc for ads.

[mithr]

Fair point, though I think that wording leaves room for interpretation...

Does learning your social graph by looking at email metadata (sender/addressee, location, time) count as "scan[ning] or reading your Gmail messages"? There are a lot of insights you could "skim from the top" if you control an entire communication platform, even if you don't fully dig into the content.

And regardless: to OP's larger point, the reason Google offers services such as Gmail for free isn't mostly because their support cost is low -- it's mostly because these services allow them to collect a large amount of data that is then used for selling targeted ads, far surpassing the amount of money they would earn from offering ad-free services.

[gsich]

Or email headers, which can also tell enough.