At the end of the email marketing remains the numero uno method of user acquisition and retention. With the new features such as priority inbox and automated classification of personal emails/promotion emails it is going to make it impossible for new consumer web startups to succeed.
If Google managed to snuff out such a widely reviled marketing channel, it would be an enormously disruptive force in the tech industry. And disruptive forces aren't hurtful for the startup community at all. Disruption makes room for innovation.
Sure, it'd be bad news for SendGrid, but it'd be awesome news for some lucky group of people in the 2015 YC batch.
I would rather see a more distributed and open system that helps people get rid of the promotional emails or not.
Times will change again.
Some people like being informed about the products/services they use - in this case, the email marketing they opt into is a periodic newsletter of sorts. When a new feature or improvement is released, some people like receiving an email notifying them of the release. Again, such an email is marketing. For larger companies, there's a marketing team who designed the email and wrote the copy for it.
Don't confuse email marketing with spam. Some marketing is spam, much of it is not.
> Unsub is stupidly easy to find and use. No, I don't need to fill out your survey or login and use textboxes to complete. > I signed up for it. The default on the signup page was no. There was clear seperation between boxes that had to be ticked and ones that didn't.
If you don't you lose the semi-legitimate and you're getting marked as spam.