Google Tool Uses Your E-mail For Search Results

11:50 PM, Aug 9, 2012   |    comments
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Google Headquarters - Mountain View, CA (Getty Images)

First, Google recorded and saved what their users are doing online and now, they're accessing their users' email.

Google is highlighting information pulled from its users Gmail accounts on its main results page.

Google says it's a way to provide data more quickly.

Here's how it works - a user has to be logged into their Gmail account before they can access this tool. After you searching for something, Google will automatically pull emails from the user's account that relate to their search.

For example, if the user searches flights or restaurants, all of their emails with that subject matter will show up in the engine.

Google says it's sensitive to security concerns and are only showing results with users' email excerpts in a collapsed format that the user will have to open.

Google hasn't announced a timeline as to when this service will be available to all users.

For now, only one million of Google's 425 million users are signed up using this tool.

Eventually this service will automatically activate for all Gmail users. That means users will have to opt-out of this tool if they don't want Google searching through their emails.

Thursday, Google was slapped with a $22.5 million fine from the Federal Trade Commission.

They say Google violated privacy pledges by following users of Apple's Safari browser on iPads, iPhones, and Macs.

It's the largest penalty the FTC has handed down against a company for violating a privacy agreement with the agency.