[timothya]

> However constantly changing any user interface is a fantastic way to make customers furious when they can no longer find things and have to stop to adapt, over and over.

Can you explain what you mean by "constantly changing"? It's clear that Google is going through a big visual refresh and rolling all of it's products over to one new unified design, but that's something that hasn't been done in a long time, it's not a constant state of significant change.

> Why not allow the old look to function for years instead of weeks or months. There is no way you are going to convince me google doesn't have the resources to do that, it's not a massive internal change, it's a visual layer.

Years is a long time for Google to have to hold onto old code and support both versions (as well as the mechanisms to allow the both to exist). And as you say, it's "just" a visual change, for most users it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt to. And I'm sure that if you had specific complaints about its usability, the team at Google working on this would be happy to hear from you.