> An algorithm scans your emails for certain keywords, and displays ads based off of what it finds
It's more than that. For example, they also scan images to identify child porn. Or Google Buzz, which showed that they scan and track the people you contact most often, and may do undesirable things with that information, like publish it.
It's naive to expect that Google/Facebook/whatever supplier of corporate IT stuff will just serve as a wholly passive platform, especially if the service is not paid.
Well, except when they do. http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...
> An algorithm scans your emails for certain keywords, and displays ads based off of what it finds
It's more than that. For example, they also scan images to identify child porn. Or Google Buzz, which showed that they scan and track the people you contact most often, and may do undesirable things with that information, like publish it.
It's naive to expect that Google/Facebook/whatever supplier of corporate IT stuff will just serve as a wholly passive platform, especially if the service is not paid.