Ah, I think we are talking about slightly different things, and it seems you still aren't catching the meaning of "mediate" being used here. I don't think Inbox

Ah, I think we are talking about slightly different things, and it seems you still aren't catching the meaning of "mediate" being used here. I don't think Inbox will be more intrusive or be more annoying because of ads. I think the user experience, like the user experience of gmail, will be great. The reasons for impuning the motives of Google here are political and consequentialist, not about user experience or software quality. It's about the consequences of having a 3rd party organize and filter your communications according to it's own incentives rather than yours, it's a discussion about power. It's about the politics of service providers putting themselves in the middle of p2p communication in order to surveil them (to monetize the software/service with ads in this case, although of course the NSA is happily given a copy). It's not about thinking people at Google are mustache twirling villians or bizdev douches who ruin things by plastering ads on them, it's about the crappy direction that well-meaning people are taking the internet.