Just a day after Google began rolling out an update to its Gmail for Android app, the Big G has made another big announcement regarding its email service. Google said today that it will soon start showing images contained within emails by default on both the desktop and mobile.
Up until now, Google has asked users if they'd like to display the images in an email before loading them in order to protect them from viruses or other attacks. Now Google says that it will begin serving images on its own secure proxy servers, checking them for viruses or malware in the process. Users will still have the option of authorizing the display of images on an email by email basis will still be able to do so by enabling the "Ask before displaying external images" setting.
I'm sure that most Gmail users have appreciated Google looking out for their security by asking for permission to display images in messages, but I'm betting that there are also quite a few folks that get a little annoyed by clicking that "Display Images Below" button. This new change will eliminate that annoyance and save Gmailers a few seconds in the process, which are two things that I'm sure most everyone can get behind. Google says that the changes will begin rolling out to the desktop version of Gmail today and to mobile apps in early 2014.
Via Gmail Blog