[amf12]

> Why people still use those spying, ad serving services and then complain about it is beyond me.

Because they don't pay for services. Microsoft and Google both provide a paid version that is ad-free. Regardless of the version, neither use your emails for ad-serving or "spying".

There are plenty of things we should be critical about w.r.t Microsoft and Google, but this ain't it.

[otikik]

“If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product” is true… but deceiving. It implies that if you pay, you aren’t. Which isn’t true.

You are the product even if you pay, because they make more money that way.

[funcDropShadow]

Logically, you can't reverse the implication as you did. A ⇒ B does not mean ¬A ⇒ ¬B .

[amf12]

> You are the product even if you pay, because they make more money that way.

That's the whole point of any business.

[plsbenice34]

>Regardless of the version, neither use your emails for ad-serving or "spying".

I thought it was known that Gmail does. I can immediately see articles as recent as 2018 [1]; did something change since then?

[1] https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/7312296/google-read-gmail-emai...

[amf12]

"The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. 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" [1]. This was apparently changed in 2017 [2].

[1] [1] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en#:~:text=Th....

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html

[zinekeller]

> as recent as 2018

> did something change since then?

GDPR, LGDP and equivalent laws plus the tangibility of emails (instead of the relatively-nebulous web history which Google could simply blame on "we only know what website we're serving from, we don't track you"). I don't know if US residents still get targeted ads using mail data though.