How to read your email

Everyone knows that Google's GMail service offers one of the best web emails funded by context based advertisement. Which means, when you read your mail, Google reads it too, and put banner ads to the side that might be of interest to you.

Now, like everyone else, I used to pay little or no attention until one day something interesting happens.

Usually, the banner shows advertisements that you will expect - like, cheap tickets to Delhi when the email mentions India or job postings when you are reading the mail from a head hunter. But, this time, I was reading a mail from my friend, who wrote the mail in Bengali language (a language spoken in Bangadesh and some parts of eastern India) using english transliteration. The advertisements were about cheap tickets to Dhaka, Bangadesh and Bengali DVDs !

Wow ! It seems Google has a database of texts from various transliteration words (note that the way you spell these words are not standard) and they can identify the language from it. So I decided to some some quick experiments to try to figure out what else they can do. Following are some interesting observations.

They mix in adverts on past searches with mails that do not generate much other ads. Like I searched on Disney Resorts few days back, and when I am reading a auto-generated mail from by bank, Disney deals show up. A mail that mentioned pot-luck generated recipe links. Mails from my friends in India always generate cheap call to India ads. A mail that some one mentioned he is up until 2 AM generated mattress ads !

Of course there are examples where Google was not too relevant. But in most cases, they do a great job.