[phs318u]

As someone who was an original invitee to Gmail it was the clarity of function that was the differentiator. They were “grown up” and acknowledged user agency vs their competitors.

But as others have mentioned, they operating model of Google as a company incentivises creating products but does not incentivise refining it. Gmail has gotten far richer in functionality but at the same time the interface has gotten far less consistent. Their competitors (mainly Microsoft but not only them) also got richer functionality, but they also paid attention to UX. While none are perfect, there are definitely some better than others. Familiarity definitely breeds inertia though, I’ll grant that.