Gmail, Unsubscribe Me!
After receiving one too many offers from EA to purchase a few of their products at a discounted rate, I decided that I'd had enough and parsed the email for the fated unsubscribe link. While doing so, I noticed something new. In the email's header data, I saw an "Unsubscribe" line, where the value was a link ("Unsubscribe from this sender"). Doing a little research turned up a post on the Official Gmail Blog detailing this new feature which I've apparently found success in avoiding since July.
It looks like Google is only displaying this header for trusted companies, such as EA, since anyone else might just take your request as a cue that you want more spam.
"This only works for some senders right now. We're actively encouraging senders to support auto-unsubscribe — we think 100% should."
In the same post, Google is also letting senders of such email know how to take advantage of this new feature.
"… including a standard "List-Unsubscribe" header in your email with a "mailto" URL and, of course, honoring requests from users wishing to unsubscribe."
Gmail has always had a pretty decent spam filter – in fact, that's why I jumped on board with them as my primary email provider back in the early beta days. This is just one more reason to stick with them. I still wonder why they're only the third largest email provider. Perhaps its the same reason why Internet Explorer is still the most commonly used browser… I am change, fear me!