As long as it stays in "promotions" tab, I could care less, as this is where they belong. If that's the case that's actually a smart move to introduce in-maillist ads without polluting the "real" inbox.
As soon as they flow out of that bucket, we're entering Twitter's dickbar levels of dorkiness.
I still have to keep all of my inboxes at zero. Every inbox must still be checked in case there is something mis-directed. I go out of my way to unsubscribe from most promotions, so no, even in the promotions box this is not welcome for me.
That, unfortunately, doesn't seem to work on the Android client (did that for the webapp). I'd give the app a bad rating for becoming more and more crappy, but I have no G+ account, cannot have a G+ account and therefor are unable to participate..
I think people are mad because it seems inevitable that, like all other new Gmail features/UI changes/etc., it will become mandatory within less than a year.
You know what's funny? You do that and when you look there are still unread things in there that it pulls from the inbox. Once you dispose of them in the inbox, they do disappear, though.
This was my reaction to the tabs as well - now I have three inboxes to keep clean instead of one! I disabled them as soon as I could figure out how to.
If you are following an inbox zero approach (as I am), then there's not much point in using the sectioned inbox IMO. I guess it might be useful if you receive tons of email and you want to sort of go through it in an ordered manner, but normally I tend to unsubscribe from things I am not interested in, so there are little or no messages in the other sections.
I do inbox zero as implied above and I thought I'd hate the sectioned tabs but I actually love it. Only because I make sure the primary inbox is cleared constantly, but can take my time getting to the social one (where it's very easy to just select all and delete).
On the contrary, they take advantage of this kind of behavior to ensure that he sees their ads. It's a problem they created and exacerbate for their own profit.
This is the whole point of 'gamification.' Dropping a number back down to zero is a form of this.
Total # of emails however can be setup to show only your "Primary" inbox. This allows me to check the other tabs much much less often since I'm only motivated to keep the # to 0.
One step further: If I'm in the "promotions" tab, then I'm actively looking for deals. So if Google can come up with promotions that interest me, then I'll welcome this new change.
It's not like they're spamming our other inboxes. It's just the promotions inbox.
This really makes a lot of sense. You have pretty overt ads displayed, and deletable, within a tab devoted to ads. It's pretty much the best scenario imaginable for an ad supported service.
One could argue that signing up for a Google service is enough to form a "business relationship" with them. Just like how if you buy a new pair of rocket skis from ACME, you're likely to get promotional email from them featuring sales on anvils.
As long as it stays in "promotions" tab, I could care less, as this is where they belong. If that's the case that's actually a smart move to introduce in-maillist ads without polluting the "real" inbox.
As soon as they flow out of that bucket, we're entering Twitter's dickbar levels of dorkiness.