> The 'promotions' tab in gmail also made things worse for many small businesses. Google doesn't want you competing for their advertising space and pushes any emails it deems a 'promotion' off to the side, so users don't actually see it. I'm not even talking about actual spam emails here, but emails users knowingly signup for and are expecting.

The difference between what a business thinks a user has signed up for and is expecting and what an actual user is actually expecting in their actual mind tends to resemble night and day. For most users the "Promotions" tab was a godsend that rescued them from significant amounts of email that was swamping the stuff in their inboxes they expected and wanted to read. It allows users to engage with promotional material at their own choice and in their own time.

Google's smart filters have been a fantastic win for the user experience.