You need to scan to detect spam, so scanning itself can't be a legal problem.
I don't see the issue here. The ads are not even slightly surreptitious, and they don't seem to be linked to your non-email ad profile. (They don't follow you across the web.)
(Would it be a problem if they were? Is there a fundamental legal issue here, is it it more of a transparency/disclosure problem?)
This is something I feel could be. I don't expect my emails to be somehow secret to google, and having targeted ads within gmail is fine by me. However I don't like the idea of them popping up on external sites when visited with my browser, or a browser I've used. There they could be revealing information about me to external parties.
Comments
You need to scan to detect spam, so scanning itself can't be a legal problem.
I don't see the issue here. The ads are not even slightly surreptitious, and they don't seem to be linked to your non-email ad profile. (They don't follow you across the web.)
(Would it be a problem if they were? Is there a fundamental legal issue here, is it it more of a transparency/disclosure problem?)
This is something I feel could be. I don't expect my emails to be somehow secret to google, and having targeted ads within gmail is fine by me. However I don't like the idea of them popping up on external sites when visited with my browser, or a browser I've used. There they could be revealing information about me to external parties.