This helps in that you don't connect directly to the image so it doesn't leak your IP and other info that would be available from the connection.

Marketing emails still send unique URLs for each recipient so they can associate your email address with opening any images and links. Google's proxy doesn't remedy this.

Technically it loads all images through a Google proxy[0] which in theory prevents third parties from using images for tracking. The third parties only get a 'hit' when Google pulls the image into their cache, which is not when you open the mail.

Google can still track you, but if you really care about that then you're probably not using Gmail anyway.

[0]: https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.html

Gmail won't load remote images when you open the mail. It will load images from Google servers that have been cached.

It does not load them from 3rd parties. It cached them and loads them from Google's servers. Open your network tab and see

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail...