> you can't just revamp the UX for a product used by billions of users without some pretty serious blowback.
Sure you can. Empower your users instead of taking features away. Make it modular with the default modules being the old interface. Make reporting spam actually useful instead of feeling like it gets ignored. Make it easier to manage a list of _thousands_ of filters. Provide better IMAP integration instead of the half-implemented crap that it is right now. Hell, just make it so that I can encrypt my emails.
Serious blowback happens when you break something for some segment of your users. You don't have to break things to provide new features.
I've written software for over 20 years. C++ mostly, a lot of Python, some Xojo.
> With that many users, you are going to break something for someone. Probably for tens of millions of someones, at the minimum.
Maybe. I don't think it's a given though.
> At some point you will have to break something. Some of the new stuff will be incompatible with the old stuff. No one has a crystal ball.
Why? At no point does making something modular have to break something. Usually when something breaks during modularization it's because it was already broken and modularization simply made it need to get fixed.
Agree here. Google could create a better UI that connects to their same backend and let users try I it out. Doesn't mean they have to break the existing UI.
It must have something to do with management but would be curious from an insider what is going on.
Sure you can. Empower your users instead of taking features away. Make it modular with the default modules being the old interface. Make reporting spam actually useful instead of feeling like it gets ignored. Make it easier to manage a list of _thousands_ of filters. Provide better IMAP integration instead of the half-implemented crap that it is right now. Hell, just make it so that I can encrypt my emails.
Serious blowback happens when you break something for some segment of your users. You don't have to break things to provide new features.