I am visually impaired and they look great to me.

Doesn't surprise me, the less you see of these icons, the better they are

FWIW, I'm also visually impaired and mystified that this very critical article even exists and further befuddled that it resonates with enough people that it has made the front page of HN.

I don't get where all the hatred is coming from beyond the knee jerk reaction that most humans hate to change. Most people tend to hate change and tend to react negatively to anything being changed.

Because every single user of a product that changes for no reason pays a price. That total cost is very high and never considered nor paid by the VP who will quickly move on.

For good redesigns, you’ll come out positive soon enough. For bad ones, never.

The move betrays the attitude that their users are not really seen or respected as human. It’s the same reason you can’t contact a human for support even if your entire digital existence gets algorithm’ed out of existence.

> I don't get where all the hatred is coming from beyond the knee jerk reaction that most humans hate to change.

From the way I see it, the logos are just plain ugly. When they changed the logo before, I don't remember having an issue with it. https://1000logos.net/gmail-logo/

I can now only read how many unread emails I have on 1/3 of my tabs and am very upset about this permanent downgrade, so yeah, I upvoted it.

https://i.imgur.com/eI7Bczd.png

That's the most compelling and concrete reason I have seen so far. (Granted, I haven't read every single comment here.)

> I don't get where all the hatred is coming from beyond the knee jerk reaction that most humans hate to change. Most people tend to hate change and tend to react negatively to anything being changed.

This is the same speech I give after I spraypaint graffiti on people's houses.

The information that "most people just hate change on principle" -- in fact, they typically see change as loss -- was a lesson learned from my spiffy corporate training when I worked for a Fortune 500 company and before I could even begin my entry level job, I first underwent three months of training. Among other things, this three months of training involved completing a certificate program in a single month by attending class 7.5 hours a day at a local technical college instead of going to the job site.

It was world class training. I imagine it's pretty solid information even before you take into account how well it fits with firsthand experience that most people just haaaaaaate change on principle, even if it turns out to be the right thing to do and they later decide it was for the best.

They all look too much alike and that's a terrible thing for an icon. They seem to be changing them just to be changing them.

because this just seems like change for the sake of change

I'm blind and these feel fantastic.

What does great mean to you? Are they still easy to distinguish? Or “great” as in you find them more visually appealing?

To be honest it just came to my mind as a funny joke and decided to shoot it. 8 upvotes is a good dose of validation.