I suppose. But the weird aspect here is the prominence of the button. The point of filtering out spam (given the more pleasant name "Promotions" now) is to put it into a place where it won't bother me. Now, they're suggesting I have a big fancy "Promotions" button at the top of my inbox. Why would I want that button there?
Re:A new Gmail inbox
by dragonwriter on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @04:36PM
(#5788900)
> But the weird aspect here is the prominence of the button.
Whichever tabs you choose to have (and if you use the layout, you choose which of the tabs are active) are available as views into your email. This both makes them out-of-the-way when their subject isn't what you want to view, and available when it is.
> The point of filtering out spam (given the more pleasant name "Promotions" now)
Not the same thing: spam (unsolicited commercial email) is still spam. Promotions are for promotions that aren't spam. The reasons why you might not want them in your normal email box are similar, but the probability that you will at some time want to review promotions for more than "did something get here by accident".
I dunno. Automatically identifying "Promotions" and sending them off to their own tab seems to be good for helping me avoid dealing with things trying to get me to spend money when I don't want to, just the same as doing the same thing for "Spam" does.
> It seems like it blurs the line between the "content" of my inbox and advertising.
Seems to me to be exactly the opposite: having a "Promotions" tab separate from the "Primary" inbox, and especially automatically routing promotional material to that "Promotions" tabl seems to draw the line between the normal content of my inbox and marketing/advertising material more clearly than it is without that feature.
(Which, if you think about it, makes sense from a purely self-interested point of view for Google-as-ad-seller; the easier it is for you to isolate and ignore email-based advertising, the more valuable the web-based advertising that Google sells is.)