Email has been one of the last holdouts of &quot;services that purely distribute&quot;, in an era where Facebook, Twitter, search results, job postings are all tailored&#x2F;processed by an algorithm before reaching the end user.<p>In addition, of the things that dominate the finite amount of our &quot;attention&quot; (FB&#x2F;IG&#x2F;Google), only email hasn&#x27;t been fully monetized.<p>When Inbox first launched, there was a lot of discussion on the end of email as a commodity. However, email&#x27;s customer today is no longer the user (you and I) but the advertisers&#x27; (e.g. context-driven ads in Gmail).<p>With Inbox, instead of passively showing context-driven ads, Google can take it to the next level similar to what Facebook has done with its newsfeed.  From inserting ads&#x2F;call to actions within the Inbox &#x27;timeline&#x27;, to forcing advertisers&#x2F;publishers behavior when it comes to how Inbox interprets&#x2F;filters&#x2F;classifies an email (remember the addition of the &quot;Promotions&quot; tab?).<p>I&#x27;d also like to recommend a recent article which talks about how Inbox is the trojan horse for your personal AI which goes into some other points: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;solveforinteresting.com&#x2F;inbox-is-the-trojan-horse-for-your-personal-ai&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;solveforinteresting.com&#x2F;inbox-is-the-trojan-horse-for...</a>