Cool. Reminded me of Designer News from earlier last year.

This design will never see the light of day.

Okay, "blue heading and gray background" is tenuous, but still - when I saw the screenshot my first thought was, "That looks like Designer News."

With gmail it's not just about design, it's also about the workflow. Id need to use it before making a decision.

Would be interested to see what the compose window looks like.

This is going to be polarizing.

when you have a reach like google, these drastic changes are hugely risky.

I think the more interesting component here is the features designed to enhance e-mail workflow, and less the visual aesthetic that's been applied here.

That being said, with respect to the visual style here, I'm worried about what this implies about Google's thinking. With UI design, there's a lot of (functional) value in changing slowly. It seems to me that Google is adopting too many contemporary visual approaches too soon

Can't say I like it too much. Looks very striped down.

seems fake.

Maybe this is the result of acquiring Sparrow?

Splitting emails up into chunks of days is a little feature I would really like.

Today - yesterday sorting seems like https://www.uniboxapp.com tribute.

The important question of these designs is:

WHERE ARE TEH ADS?

If it was the right UX, there's no problem to copy that. Because there are not too much things about UI design.

Ha! I think you're right Jordan.

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pretty, but like the article says - Gmail works (good enough anyway), Contacts doesn't - and is where they should be focusing a bit of time and energy..