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I believe so. Opera show cased this beta email design/feature set which was very appealing for anyone not interested in using Google's services. They do seem to be innovating though, the new Gmail design is much better in my opinion and if Google+ takes off it'll become even further integrated into your life.

I think Google really wants G+ to link all of the Google services we use together and bring people onto services they weren't previously using. For those which live in Google this is great but for those which only want to try G+ or use one service it puts more barriers in your way.