I'm convinced this is the entire purpose of Google PMs; take a good product, make it "prettier", strip away functionality and usability, move to another department, get replaced by someone whose goal it is to make the product even prettier-er, strip away even more functionality, wash/rinse/repeat.

Is there a single person who prefers the monochrome GMail UI where you can't easily visually parse one thread from another, or the "new and improved" functionality where you need to click at least 2 or 3 times to even SEE what address you're sending to or from, or to change the subject?