I am not sure what you think I am missing. Google has offered this type of filtering before. I have continued to use it for the last year and really enjoy it.
The already existing feature is more intelligent than "a big table of senders". For example, some of the emails I receive from Amazon are sent directly to me as notifications and some are filtered away into Promotions to be viewed on my schedule. It is smart enough to know that I don't want my day interrupted by Amazon's next sale but do want to see my order confirmations from Amazon as soon as they are received.
I am not criticizing Google, I am just noting that this is not a new feature but a Gmail labs experiment graduating into the main Gmail feature set with a fresh new coat of UI polish.
The already existing feature is more intelligent than "a big table of senders". For example, some of the emails I receive from Amazon are sent directly to me as notifications and some are filtered away into Promotions to be viewed on my schedule. It is smart enough to know that I don't want my day interrupted by Amazon's next sale but do want to see my order confirmations from Amazon as soon as they are received.
I am not criticizing Google, I am just noting that this is not a new feature but a Gmail labs experiment graduating into the main Gmail feature set with a fresh new coat of UI polish.