The lack of consistency and common sense is unbelievable.
The only reason why Android has a user-friendly UI is because Google copied the design from Apple in 2007.
I have the feeling that UX specialists are actually the problem. When you employ people to work on UX and design, well, they will work on it, even if there is nothing to do. So you get periodic redesigns that improve nothing but justify the existence of a bunch of people whose purpose in life is to propose UX changes.
The "random content boxes and buttons floating in a sea of pure white" seems to be the latest awful trend in web design. I get that borders and shadows are out of style, but they are necessary for visually grouping things together.
That's precisely what I find scary about those UX changes: they to run counter-current of everything I value in UX (clean and compact vs. bloated and spread out).
The new GMail seems like a more functional “new Reddit”. It achieves a certain look and was probably metric driven, but didn’t really address what users care about.
As a casual GMail user, I like it. But it would drive me crazy if I had to work with it all day with my work mail volume.
I used to visit Google News multiple times per day. Then the UX went to hell there too. Each iteration became worse. After the latest changes, it became so unbearably hideous and clunky that I couldn't stand it anymore. I got mad every time I loaded the site. But years of keyboard memory still had me typing in the URL constantly, getting mad every time it loaded up. I finally black holed it in /etc/hosts to break the habit.
Gmail is in a similar state now. The new UI is hideous and clunky. And on the engineering side, it takes multiple seconds to load up. I thought Googlers were supposed to be known for their engineering competence?
Calendar? Bleh. It's still in a tolerable state, but visually the previous release was easier to work with.
Bring back contrast. Bring back visual dividers. Stop with the clown buttons like the mega "Compose"... these are tools we use for years and we had our first-run experiences over a decade ago.
Fire whoever is driving your god awful UX on web.