Gmail, arguably, has the largest share of email users. When companies as large as Google do redesign, other people tend to blindly copy their design decisions. And the design choices such companies make are often bad/wrong/suboptimal etc.
It actually makes perfect sense to criticise Google's design because 1) they are a multibillion dollar company who apparently can't even invest in a product designer, and 2) they are highly visible and other projects (especially open source ones) will gladly adopt the same approaches. Just look at the incomprehensible mess that is Material design.
It actually makes perfect sense to criticise Google's design because 1) they are a multibillion dollar company who apparently can't even invest in a product designer, and 2) they are highly visible and other projects (especially open source ones) will gladly adopt the same approaches. Just look at the incomprehensible mess that is Material design.