• InfoWorld, Wednesday, April 7, 2010 2:51 PM

Setting itself apart from Google, Microsoft has pledged not to tailor the ads that users' see based the content of their personal emails. "This is enshrined in policy across all our online services," Tim O'Brien, Microsoft senior director of platform strategy, said with regard to the company's hosted applications, and Hotmail in particular. To target ads, Microsoft does collect information on consumers' gender, age, and "preferences" -- but not any data directly traceable to an individual.

Reached for comment, a Google representative confirmed that its Gmail platform performs an automatic software scan for keywords in emails to serve more relevant ads to users. "The process is similar to what all major email services use to scan for viruses and to filter out spam," he said. But, "To be clear, no human being ever reads the emails sent or received during this process."

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