Fucking whitespace.
I know, I know Google, you are King Leonidas and there’s nothing you love more than being all Spartan and stuff, but seriously now: cut it out.
In your attempt to merge your product designs with Google+, you’ve broken two of your most beloved offerings: Gmail and Google Reader. With whitespace.
Back when we were still living in caves, I had a Yahoo Mail account. That’s because the only other alternative was Hotmail which offered 2MB of free space (remember those days?).
Then you came sauntering in with over 250MB of free space and that ‘designed by Google’ aura. And of course, I jumped on board.
And I loved it. I had 50 invites. All 50 were out in a day. Now my friends were on Gmail, and we could all have nice little Gmail parties.
Even as you continued to release one broken product after another (Buzz, GoogleTV, Wave) and I grew disillusioned with the sanctity of your search results, I stuck by with Gmail. It was – and still is – the best free email service on the planet.
And the design. Or even the lack of it. Those blue hues were gorgeously minimalistic for their time and still are incredibly easy to navigate. I had no complaints. Why fix something that’s not broken?
But then began your Google+ obsession. Let me tell you right now: you won’t succeed. Nope. Never. A corporate giant isn’t going to knock Facebook off its perch; it’ll take a young upstart to do that (Sergey and Larry: you do remember that pre-billionaire phase, don’t you?). Remember: never underestimate the viral popular appeal of the underdog.
While that’s fine – I’ve insulated myself from all Google+ hype – you don’t have to go around breaking my beloved products for it.
The Google Reader redesign is a disaster. So much so that the guys who created the service hate you for it as well.
The Gmail app for the iPhone has already been pulled off from the App store because it sucks far too much. Never before in the history of your company have your products been so bad that they had to be pulled out from distribution.
Then the Gmail design itself.
You got rid of my beloved blue, replaced it with white and light grey. Gone is the intuitive ‘feel’ of a click. Instead, you have installed a white-grey monstrosity that is not only difficult to navigate around, but is slow as hell too.
It reminds me of Hotmail.
Ouch. That should burn.
And you know what hurts?
You won’t let me keep that old design permanently.
And you’re doing it across all your web properties – from AdSense and Analytics to Gmail and Reader.
All for that shiny new Google+.
