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Gmail has already been targeted from day 1!

But then they stopped cause the marginal value of the information they got from gmail was not as large as it used to be. The information from email receipts from purchases was particularly valuable but major retailers stopped providing that in email to limit how much info google could observe.

> but major retailers stopped providing that in email to limit how much info google could observe.

What makes you believe that was their motivation?

I think we'd be remiss not to consider general changes in the security landscape: E-mails are not encrypted the same way HTTPS visits are, and from a compliance standpoint it's easier to argue that you did your due-diligence, only showing the information to the authorized person.

In other words, I'd expect the trend to happen regardless of whether Google (or any other company) started spying on customer data for a competitive advantage.

Contemporary reporting in the WSJ:

https://archive.is/xjSZA

Though it seems Yahoo was the more aggressive offender

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