Last week, Google Search celebrated its 15th year in the industry and with that came a number of updates for its apps and services.  The Google Search app now streamlines the experience even if you’re using different devices using different platforms, and search is now more intuitive.

Aside from that, Google also updated its Gmail app with darker UI icons, alerts for unsent messages, the cancel button has been removed so you only have to tap on the “Back” button of your device to cancel sending a message, and contacts and notifications without pictures are given one – usually the first letter of the service. However the biggest new change to come – if the rumors are correct – is that you might soon start seeing ads thrown up on your mobile Gmail app.

AndroidPolice discovered codes within the Gmail app program which mean we could soon be seeing ads in the Gmail app, just like the web app, with Google pushing ads to a folder designated for ads or promotions.  Ads appear and disappear at will, but if you like an ad you see, you can now save, if not, just ignore and it will disappear, only to be replaced by a new ad. There are eight ‘classes’related to ad presentation – toasts, teaser, sender header, ad header, ad border, and the ad view itself.

Advertising is Google’s primary source of revenue so it is not surprising to see ads within its free services, though irritating and sometimes regarded as useless, it is what makes the service free.

Though the Gmail app still remains ad-free at present, ads will come.  If you don’t think you can handle ads on your Android device, here are some other email apps that you can consider instead of Gmail:

Yandex.Mail

This app gives you the Yandex Mail experience in the go like sending emails and chatting. You can include attachments in your email, share location with friends, search messages, group message by subject, filter messages, plus the push notification constantly updates the app so your messages are always up to date.  Yandex.Mail is free on Google Play.

Mail.Ru

Another Russian email service, it offers multiple account support, full synchronization from PC to mobile, protected folder, push notifications, filtering notifications, and a personal spam filter to avoid annoying email ads.  Mail.Ru is free on Gogole Play.

Outlook.com

This app gives you access to Outlook.com so you can send and receive emails on the go just by signing in with your Outlook.com email address and password.  It features push notification, sync calendar, contacts, folders and sub-folders, has Conversation Threading so you can group email conversations, and it supports multiple Outlook accounts.  Outlook.com is free on Google Play.

For those of you who do not want to ditch Gmail when the ads go live, here are some ad free email clients:

Zeus Email Mail App

This email client is ad free and it supports Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and other popular email services.  It features threaded email folders, supports pop, imap and some exchange accounts.  But since it is a free version, it can only support two accounts and has a limited folder creation.  Available in Google Play for free.  If you don’t want limitations, you can get the Zeus Mail Pro instead.

Aqua Mail

It supports email services via standard Internet email protocols such as IMAP, POP3, SMTP. It features push mail, save attachments on memory cards, widgets display message count and list.  And it is ad free.  Free on Google Play.

K-9 Mail

K-9 Mail is an open source email client with search that supports IMAP, POP3 and Exchange 2003/2007 with WebDAV.  It features IMAP push email, multi-folder sync, flagging, filing, signatures, bcc-self, PGP, mail on SD and more.  Supports popular email services like Gmail, Yahoo, FastMail.FM and more.  Free on Google Play.