If I put "Go fishing" into my calendar for next Monday, Google knows:

1) This person fishes.

2) This person probably buys fishing related products.

3) We know this person lives in X and fishes there, and business Y has a website selling similar products.

4) This person is going fishing on a Monday afternoon (for example) so they are probably off work on Mondays or afternoons.

Let's say, I also put in meetings. "Meet with Joe about building a website for his company."

1) This person builds websites

2) Uses hosting services

3) Buys domains

4) Probably codes

5) Must need project management software

6) And all other things typically related to people in this field...

Knowing someone's life this intimately is incredibly valuable.

But... why wouldn't they? Google already is heavily invested in doing this kind of parsing because a lot of their calendar entries are integrated with AI that figures out when you need to leave your house, how to add entries dictated over voice, how to auto-add new appointments based on emails without duplicating entries, and so on.

So Google already needs to know how to parse your calendar data in intelligent ways. And the way that data would be integrated into ads is not going to be all that different from the way Gmail data was processed.

Who cares if it's a small fraction of users? It's basically free data, being consumed by technologies that Google already has to build anyway -- and for the few users that do heavily use calendar, you're getting a ton of data on their everyday schedule.

Why build a set of tools that can do all of this parsing and then say, "nah, we're not going to deploy it everywhere."?

> What percentage of people actively use Google Calendar?

I don't know. My hunch is that it's not a fringe product though.

It's been a while since I checked, but I remember either Calendar or Keep being the default calendar app on Android. What percentage of Android owners use the built-in calendar on their phone to set reminders?

You work for Google and are apparently "pretty sure" that Calendar isn't used for ad targeting but don't actually know, how is a consumer supposed to know this stuff?

I want to believe you, I like the story you are telling. Unfortunately you like it too and are not being objective.

Enough to make it worth continuing to operate the service, clearly. Do you really want to go down that road?