Earlier this morning, Google announced that it would stop scanning students’ Apps for Education accounts to target ads at them. What was somewhat lost in that announcement was that Google will also make similar changes to other account types. Google will also soon stop scanning the accounts of Google Apps customers with Business, Government and legacy accounts for the free version.
As Google confirmed to us earlier today, the company will permanently remove the “enable/disable” toggle for ads in the Google Apps console. This means that, by default, ads in Google Apps services will now be turned off and admins won’t even have the option to turn them on.
At the same time, Google will stop collecting and using data in Google Apps services for advertising purposes.
It looks like these changes are now rolling out to Google Apps customers, and Google promises to provide an update when the rollout is complete.
The change to Google Apps for Education was prompted by privacy concerns and a complaint by students and teachers in the the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Chances are, this also spurred the company’s decision to make these changes to its other Google Apps subscription services.