There's a phrase that large companies often use to explain "puzzling" features like this to detractors: you are not the target audience. Often this phrase is mi

There's a phrase that large companies often use to explain "puzzling" features like this to detractors: you are not the target audience. Often this phrase is mis-used to cover up straight up bad ideas, but in this case it's right on the money. The target audience for this feature are CIOs of organizations Google sells G-Suite to. Companies do need IRM on emails, to prevent leaks that could happen by accident or intentionally; to limit email audience; to avoid endless replies-to-all on announcements; to put an expiration date on the "perishable" bits of information; etc. I'm pretty positive that they have to have this to compete with Office 365, which had IRM [1] for a very long time. Yes, it's not perfect, however, if it's there, it mitigates a lot of the issues I mentioned above. Note the wording: "mitigates", not "fixes". It's interesting that they still list screenshots as a possibility: email clients (e.g. Outlook) are able to utilize OS mechanisms to prevent those as well. I thought that browser protected media APIs would allow Gmail opt-in to this kind of protection too. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/SecurityCompliance/information-rights-management-in-exchange-online https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/SecurityComplianc...