[tacker2000]

>Gmail was snappy, quick and and had possibly the best UX in any mail client. Now it takes >20 secs on a broadband connection to give me a white-washed mess of a page with no real discerning advantage over the plain html version.

Spot on.

As soon as i started seeing the “a new version of gmail is coming soon, click here to try it” banner, i knew that the end of my great gmail experience was nigh.

It’s funny because i NEVER even had the slightest doubt that the new UI would be shittier, and it turned out to be just like i expected it.

Gmail got big due to their extremely snappy ui and is now used by people who cant be arsed to migrate, like is the case with yahoo mail.

And every other google ui is getting worse every week.

To the googlers here, please show me a product where the UI has actually improved and is not just a whitespace inferno.

[coffeeling]

> Gmail got big due to their extremely snappy ui

They also gave 1-2GB of storage back before Dropbox existed (predates Dropbox by 3 years) and other free webmails gave a some megabytes. It was a far superior mail-files-to-yourself platform than anything else on the market.

[tarboreus]

They also did this with Google Voice before they axed it. The original Gmail was such a tight app, I still quite miss it. Next thing they're going to make it harder to get your emails in and out and I'll be done with them.

[zenexer]

Google Voice is back. They forced everyone off of Voice and over to Hangouts; now, they’re forcing everyone back.

[anderspitman]

I've been using gvoice as my primary phone number for 10 years. The UI has certainly had it's ups and downs, but I wouldn't say it's ever been "axed".