It doesn't matter what brilliant ground level people want if they don't get to do anything about it because of pressure from management.

I have seen this first-hand. I bet you have too. A brilliant user friendly idea stays at the bottom of the product log, as middle and upper management product asks get piled on top of it, pushing it deeper and deeper.

Sure, I guess you could donate the small amount of free time you get to your employer and do it after work, but I can't think of anything more demotivating than working for free for a company with revenue in the hundreds of millions.

This may be true, but follow the money. The facts of their business plan are a simple matter of public record. Users are the product and their customers are advertisers. As a company, they exist to service advertisers. Everything else is just noise. Sure, they have some incredibly talented engineers trying to create good stuff. None of that matters. The focus of the company remains the same. As potential users, we must choose to support that business model or not.

As long as someone understands the Faustian bargain and enters into it willingly, no problem. The difficulty is that it is unlikely most users really understand the details of the deal they are entering. "Hey, cool, free email." That's about the end of the thought process for most users. Google's approach is brilliant in its simplicity. "Free" stuff.

This is a bit of an exaggeration, but: I bet you the arms industry is full of brilliant people as well, but developing systems that are designed to kill people is still wrong.

> I bet you the Gmail team is full of brilliant people who don’t give a shit about advertising

I mean they better give a shit about advertising because it’s what lets them have a job at Google.