I think this response often comes up in response to complaints about UI changes. Sometimes it’s a valid response, and people are just being resistant to change. Sometimes the changes are genuinely bad. The point is - the fact that people complain about everything doesn’t mean that some of the things they complain about aren’t legitimate problems!
Legitimate or not, what the user perceives as problematic may make total sense for the business providing the service. Google (Facebook, Reddit, etc.) is not a non-profit or government agency that acts in the interests of the people. It's a business operating on capitalist principles, so profit is, by design, their main drive (of the business as such, not necessarily of the individuals who work there).
Somehow we insist on treating these mega-corporations as if they are always beneficent, and anytime one of them does something that doesn't align the user's and business interests, there is a storm of complaints like this.
Sure, it would be nice if a mega-corporation always acted in its user's interests, but that's not how the current system works.
Ideally, we'd end up with a system where you just pay a company to host your on-line end-points, keeping all data and the software you use personal, and you have the option to move to a competitor at a moment's notice, keeping all identifiers (like an email address now). Where just not there yet.
It took over 20 seconds for the compose Window to pop up today.
Yes it was the first time on load, but why did Gmail take 30 seconds to load before it was usable? Why did a website take as long to load as my entire OS? 32GB of RAM, 4+4 cores, what the hell is going on?
I just tested again, 34 seconds from hitting enter at "gmail.com" to getting a compose window loaded.
Gmail used to be lightening fast, an example of what an amazing HTML5 webapp could be. Now it is a joke.
Consider all the people who still use sysvinit and (a fork of) GNOME 2. (Yes, I think many who oppose systemd do so because of the UI change.) And consider the much larger group that initially opposed that were strong opponents for a while but have now moved on.
You have a good point, which is that cars have a horrible UI. One of the most important requirements is the ability to brake fast in an emergency, yet the UI requires you to physically move your foot to another pedal before you can even start to brake.
Why don't they change the UI, then? Mostly because of regulations, I think. It's unclear to me whether bringing a new driving UI to the market would be horribly difficult, costly and risky, or just plain impossible.
While you and a million others might not like the new $webapp UI, it's still a good thing that they can and do get changed. Especially in this case considering you can start using any email client anytime if you don't like the web UI.
Considering Gmail takes seconds to load now (250Mbit link, Ryzen 8core, 32 GB RAM), I don't see myself using Gmail if they upgrade in the same fashion in 6 months.
Sources:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1020032...
Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/redesign/comments/8w03ms/is_it_poss...