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.

Gmail has had ads for at least a decade.

It's been like that for a long time.

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.

were these not always in gmail?

They have been for years now.

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.

alwayshasbeen.jpg

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.

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

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

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.

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

Pay for email, get no ads.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

That's what Google is

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

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.

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

You haven't checked your email in how many years?

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