Gmail Forces New Look

The good times are over and the ugly Gmail era has dawned. Google finally made good on the threat of making the new look permanent. Over the weekend my Gmail style switched to the new ugliness and there was no longer an option available to revert to the old look as before.

I can whine and complain about the new style but in the end it's Google's service and I'm using it for free. If I don't like it, I can leave, but not going to do that for now, I still like Gmail better than Yahoo and Hotmail. This attitude is not unprecedented at Google. When they took away the FTP feature of Blogger which was my blogging platform then, I complained too. In that case I decided to migrate my blog to Wordpress on my own site and have been happy with that decision.

What also ticks me off is that there are no themes to make Gmail look like its past version. That would have been so easy for Google but alas, there are no retro or classic themes. It's like Google wanted to wipe away even the tiniest connection to Gmail's past. For now the best choice for me is the compact mode with the high-contrast theme. That's neither compact nor high-contrast, but eventually I'll get used to it. Meanwhile I'm sure Google is already working on an uglier next version of Gmail.