Ok, I see what you're saying. I guess that pic just comes off as being in poor taste in this post then. Because, in reality, those are not the tabs normal people would set up. So I began to question what the point of the feature was. Is it really to help me organize my inbox? Or is it for Google to show me things they want me to spend money on?
Yes, I would like to keep them separate, but I would not like to have a big prominent link to them at the top of my inbox. See the labels listed in the mobile app screenshot ("Family," "Fun," "School")? I (and most other people, I would think) would much sooner like to have big buttons to those things at the top of my inbox. Not "Promotions."
I think you under-estimate how much people care about these types of e-mails. At work we manage the mailing list for a big restaurant chain. Their "active users" subset of their mailing list makes up about 1/3 of the total, and that 1/3 opens 40% of the promotional e-mails they are sent within 2 days. For a lot of people "Promotions" e-mails both represents a leisure activity (hunting for bargains), and social activities (lunch with colleagues, dinner with friends, evening at the theatre etc.).
