It also gets tricky doing spam detection and search if all email is encrypted on the client.

Or easier, if mostly the people who send ham know your public key.

Google is more than capable of delivering a user a reasonably targeted ad in gmail without reading the message body.

Capable but unwilling.

Don't want and don't support are two different things. Google have lots of ways to get ad signal.

Leading the way looks a lot better than dragging your feet on something that is going to happen whether they want it to or not. At least they can say "hey we lead the way on this, even if it was 3 decades too late"

> that is going to happen whether they want it to or not

I highly doubt this. This sounds like wishful thinking.

Pessimism, just as illogical as optimism.

As in, care to explain why you so highly doubt it? I have little more than anecdotal trends as evidence.

Maybe they don't care about your email(they have plenty of data) as long nobody else can use it for ads ?