New to this? Read it in simple words
- Google changed its privacy policy on October 16, 2026.
- If you connect Gmail, Drive or Photos to Search, that data may now shape your ads.
- Google says advertisers never see your emails or photos.
- Connecting the apps is a choice, and you can disconnect them at any time.
- Personalised ads
- Ads chosen for one person, based on what a company knows or guesses about them.
- Privacy policy
- A company’s public text that says what personal data it collects and how it uses it.
- Inference
- A guess drawn from data, such as interests worked out from emails or photos.
Google lets people connect Gmail, Drive and Google Photos to services such as Search and the Gemini apps, so that its AI can give more personal answers. Reports call this Personal Intelligence. A change to Google’s privacy policy, in force since October 16, 2026, now links that data to ads.
What changed in the policy
The version used until October 12 was a plain promise not to base personalised ads on content from Drive, Gmail or Photos. The new version keeps that sentence but adds “unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads”.
It also gives an example: Search “may process” the data people let it access “to personalize content, including ads”, the policy says.
The policy names only Search in its ads example. It lists the Gemini apps as a service that can read the data, but doesn’t say that Gemini uses it for ads.
Google’s privacy policy, before and after October 16.
What Google says
A Google Search help page is plainer. It says the information Search draws from connected apps “may be used to show you ads, so they are even more helpful for you”.
Google says ads “will not be based directly” on a Gmail inbox or a Photos library, and that Search uses summaries, excerpts and inferences instead. It also says advertisers get no access to the content. Outsiders can’t check these claims.
Connecting the apps is a choice that people have to make, and they can disconnect them at any time, the help page says.
What stays the same
The policy still says Google doesn’t base personalised ads on sensitive topics such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health. It also says Google doesn’t give advertisers people’s names or email addresses, unless they ask it to.
PPC Land, which compared Google’s archived policies, says the old promise had stood in the same words since 2021.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1
- 2
- 3Primary source · Accessed October 24, 2026Connect your Google content apps to get a Search experience that’s tailored to you Google Search Help
- 4Research · October 19, 2026Google can now use insights from your Gmail and Photos to target ads Techlicious
- 5Research · October 23, 2026Your Gmail and Photos could now fuel Google’s personalized ads Android Authority
- 6Research · October 23, 2026Google will target ads based on Gmail, Photos data if Personal Intelligence is enabled 9to5Google
- 7Research · October 23, 2026Google lets connected Gmail and Photos data shape ads, 5 years after pledge PPC Land
The story rests on Google’s own policy texts and help page. That ads don’t use inboxes directly, and that advertisers see nothing, are Google’s claims.
Google’s privacy policy adds an exception to its five-year-old promise, so connected Gmail and Photos data may now shape ads. How we rate the mood