Google Ties Gmail, Photos Data to Ads via Personal Intelligence

Google rewrote a five-year-old promise this month. As of October 16, the company's privacy policy no longer blanket-excludes Gmail, Drive, and Google Photos content from personalized advertising; it carves an exception for users who turn on Personal Intelligence, the opt-in feature that lets Search and Gemini draw on those apps. 9to5Google first flagged the quiet rewrite.

The new sentence reads: "We don't show you personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Google Photos, unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads." A separate clause adds that "Search may process some of the data that you allow Search to access to personalize content, including ads."

Google's own help pages try to hold a boundary. "Ads will not be based directly on your Gmail inbox or your Google Photos library," one line reads, and "Advertisers will not have access to your Gmail inbox or Google Photos." The original pledge, dated July 2021 by PPC Land, carried no such exception.

The reversal lands as Google's AI products pull on data the company had walled off from its ad business. Google VP Dan Taylor said in January that "there are no ads in the Gemini app" and no plans to add them. Search chief Nick Fox has described Personal Intelligence as opt-in, noting "not all users enable it." The policy itself hedges that opt-in status is in place "for the time being."

Sensitive categories stay walled off: Google says it still won't personalize ads on "race, religion, sexual orientation, or health."