Google has breached an EU court ruling by sending unsolicited advertising emails directly to the inbox of Gmail users, Austrian advocacy group noyb.eu said on Wednesday in a complaint filed with France’s data protection watchdog.

The Alphabet unit, whose revenues mainly come from online advertising, should ask Gmail users for their prior consent before sending them any direct marketing emails, noyb.eu said, citing a 2021 decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJUE).

While Google’s ad emails may look like normal ones, they include the word “Ad” in green letters on the left-hand side, below the subject of the email, noyb.eu said in its complaint.

“It’s as if the postman was paid to remove the ads from your mailbox and put his own instead,” said Romain Robert, programme director at noyb. eu, with reference to Gmail’s anti-spam filters that put most unsolicited emails in a separate folder.

Japan nuclear

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday instructed his government to consider developing safer, smaller nuclear reactors, signalling a renewed emphasis on nuclear energy.

Kishida made the comment at a “green transformation” conference on bolstering the country’s efforts to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

Anti-nuclear sentiment and safety concerns rose sharply in Japan after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, but the government has been pushing for a return to nuclear energy amid worries of power shortages.

AP/PTI