I have been a Gmail user for a while now and I have always wondered how Google decides which ads to display to me when I am reading or writing emails.

After some research, I found out that Google scans email subject and contents for keywords. For example, I have been emailing my group members about a project we’re doing for a firm in the pet nutrition industry back and forth for a while. Now I keep on getting ads about dog care and nutrition. I do not have any pets and and not very interested in owning one, yet I get all kinds of ads that pertain to pet care and pets in general.

I think it is definitely a neat feature (excluding the privacy issues), but Google needs to do a better job in my opinion as I have not found a single useful ad so far.

Not that there is anything wrong with these pets…