> “To help you easily view and keep track of your purchases, bookings and subscriptions in one place, we’ve created a private destination that can only be seen by you,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC. “You can delete this information at any time. We don’t use any information from your Gmail messages to serve you ads, and that includes the email receipts and confirmations shown on the Purchase page.”
What guarantee is there that this is not being used for other purposes? To train other kinds of models? To, say, monitor other people’s AWS bills, in order to optimize their own offerings? How likely is it that such a project was approved with no gain except adding perceived value to the Gmail product? I have a hard time believing they would do it only for that.
> I have a hard time believing they would do it only for that.
Why? Adding perceived values is how you get more users. More users == increased revenue.
I think the important question is: if Google were doing something nefarious like that, why on earth would they tie it to a public feature instead of just keeping it totally secret?
But is that actually nefarious, or meaningfully proscribed, or is it not understood that this kind of stuff is how Google makes money, and how it will continue to make money into the future? Is this unacceptable to most people? I am uncomfortable with it, but isn't this the way "business is done?"
I think you're right in the simple case, and they're not _currently_ doing something nefarious, but I also think it takes one creative product manager one day to decide they will directly sell that data, and most people will be too invested by that point
They say they won’t use it to sell ads:
> “To help you easily view and keep track of your purchases, bookings and subscriptions in one place, we’ve created a private destination that can only be seen by you,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC. “You can delete this information at any time. We don’t use any information from your Gmail messages to serve you ads, and that includes the email receipts and confirmations shown on the Purchase page.”
What guarantee is there that this is not being used for other purposes? To train other kinds of models? To, say, monitor other people’s AWS bills, in order to optimize their own offerings? How likely is it that such a project was approved with no gain except adding perceived value to the Gmail product? I have a hard time believing they would do it only for that.