Google is putting ads in gmail. WTF?

These ads only appear in the "promotions" section of Gmail, the section that is by definition for advertising emails. It's not great, but this is the least intrusive place to put ads.

Maybe I’m missing something, but hasn’t this been the case since forever?

I mean, Google is an advertising company. I would be surprised if they didn’t serve ads in their free email service.

It's been like that for a long time.

were these not always in gmail?

Yes it is. It is malware at this point. (It’s trying to trick you into clicking ads.) If I can invite you to try Port87, it’s an email service that I wrote that does the opposite. (Keeps spam out of your inbox, rather than inserting spam into it.)

Full disclosure: I developed and run Port87, and as such, have a financial interest in it.

They have been for years now.

Lol who the fuck uses the promotions tab?

You are just using Gmail poorly.

Like going to a shopping centre and complaining the stores have ads in front of their stores. There's legitimate concerns about Google and then there's just dumb users.

alwayshasbeen.jpg

It's only in the promotions inbox, which if Gmail is sorting correctly is just full of commercial spam anyways. Doesn't really impact the experience for me since I rarely ever check it

Wait until you see Yahoo mail.

Edit: Before you say nobody uses Yahoo mail, it's probably the 2nd most used after gmail at my school, afaik, I haven't met another person using protonmail.

If the service is free, you are the product. It's not complicated.

Pay for email, get no ads.

Don't worry, they're also selling your data on top of that

Y'all they have been doing this for literally years. Don't act surprised it's not fucking new.

Advertising company puts adverts in one of few products they didn't shutter two years in.

Years ago.

More at 11.

Looks like your email account is nothing but adverts anyway, so probably not a huge deal?

I'd switch to FairEmail or K-9 Mail instead.

Both are great.

I remember seeing this at least more than 5 years ago, before discovering the benefits of FOSS.

Protons self-promotions are even more intrusive.

Bruh your real name is on the image

It is insiane to me that Google shows these ads to google one subscribers.

I already pay google hundreds of dollars a year, and have done so for years. then over the last 2 yesr they slowly started rolling out intrusive ads into my mobile Gmail app.

It was the final straw for me. I've started slowing migrating my email off Gmail, but my goodness is that ever a slow and painful process.

Yep, getting about time to move the rest of my email over to proton...

The only way to disable them is to disable the inbox sorting setting (where it sorts primary, promotional, and social). As it is, it only puts adds in the promotional inbox. The worst thing is, i swear it knows where your mouse is and re sorts your emails so an ad lands right below your mouse, increasing the number of ad clicks and the ad revenue. I've had this happen to be multiple times.

Use k-9 mail (its a good email client and it supports gmail)

That's what Google is

The real culprit here is BIMI and the Marketing folks.

This is just the beginning, with more mail providers probably joining in sooner or later.

Google has always done this. I wouldn't know though because I've turned off a lot of the personalization settings and always use adblocking DNS.

Why do people upvote this post, without reading comments that say its nothing new?

Adguard must block this because I've never seen these in my life

They are legally obliged to screw over their users as much as possible maximize shareholder value

I suggest Tutanota or Protonmail.

Oh my god, they're really going full enshittification now. Never thought I'd see them stoop this low.

I use protonmail, so I don’t have to see shit like that.

I was helping my dad with some computer stuff and I noticed Microsoft outlook online (Hotmail) has ads as well.
My corporate outlook online doesn't have ads.
And my personal gsuite (paid for Gmail) doesn't have ads.

Gmail has been doing this for yeeeaars

Because of low digital literacy

I'd need to pay for them. I don't care about privacy on my Gmail account so I let it slide.

Edit: oh wait, Proton has a free-tier. Will check

I believe this has been going on for a while now. It's one of the reasons why I switched over to Proton Mail.

Is that really surprising?

I don't see them with FairEmail client.

It's restricted to specific inbox tabs. I now only use Inbox, Forums and Updates, and get no adds.

idk what to say so the only thing i'm gonna say is... what the fuck

🌏👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

This is why I switched.

Well, were you approved?

I'm thinking the mobile users are in the worst spot for this. For desktop all this random spam goes into its own tab that I never look at.

Alas, the spam in my "real" google inbox is all my fault. Shouldn't have gave substack my email address.

This is why, if you need to use gmail, you never use the official app. Just use a different client, anf you at least bypass this specific bullshit

Windows is phasing out the built in mail app which is basic but decent…forcing “upgrade” to Outlook which has ads if you’re not a paid user.

I don't understand why there are so many surprised people in this thread. They've been doing this for a pretty long time now. Yahoo has been doing it for even longer.

Unless this is just people being fake surprised as a joke?

honestly, just use a mail client. on Android I use k9. on desktop, thunderbird.

Vouching for FairEmail. It's by far my favourite mail client. It's material design and very safe cause it strips out all images by default or only tracking images if you choose.

Yeah, I knew about that this year, so many ads and comparing with other alternatives it's like... lol

Apparently hotmail/Microsoft does the same

That's why I use Gmail through the K-9 Mail app (When I have to).

I started getting this with the new outlook. Rolled back and they vanished.

I don't use any of the default Gmail apps. Not because of ads, but because, if your email is too long, Google will truncate it and make you click to a new page to read the whole thing. I found Edison Mail on Android works acceptably. And in Firefox I use an addon called Notifier for Gmail. But I've seen recently that N for G might stop working sometime soon.