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.
This is the whole point of 'gamification.' Dropping a number back down to zero is a form of this.
It's not like they're spamming our other inboxes. It's just the promotions inbox.
The promotion tab is where you get promotional emails from services that you have OPTED IN to receive emails from.
So is it far game if the Viagra emails only appear in the promotion's tab?
Google is sending spam (unsolicited emails). That is all there is s to say about it.
Is that a joke?
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.