Case in point: the gmail action icons. Oh god, why? They used to be simple text labels, and now every time I use them I have to hover over every icon looking at the text popups to find the one I want.
After the first 20-30 times where I had to take a few seconds to work out the difference between the select and archive icons, I just started using the keyboard shortcuts exclusively. Archive is 'y', it has always been 'y'. Fortunately they haven't managed to break the keyboard interface.
Google are famously data-driven, but I really can't imagine how they're finding empirical support for the idea that abstract monochrome icons are more effective than clear text labels.
"y" means "remove from current view", to be exact.
So if you click a message from the "Work" label, it removes the "Work" label. And if you click a message from Inbox and hit "y", it removes it from Inbox (i.e. archives it).
