Pretty much, the basic HTML version of Gmail they strongly advise you against using is closer to the Gmail I want than the Gmail that they push by default.
Upon following that link a giant banner was displayed saying "it's better in the app". It seems they've discovered there's still a lightweight version of google left and are quickly trying to close the gate.
By the way, why on earth would anyone want an app to do a google search? When searching for a webpage, the best 'app' is going to be the one that shows webpages, named 'the browser'. It's like going to weightwatchers.com and seeing a banner ad that tells you "it's better with mcdonalds". It is laughably grotesque. What happened to google that they've strayed so far from sanity?
And the Gmail bloat is nothing compared to the Yahoo! Mail bloat. It's so slow and bloated that with my phone I'm not even able to get as far as downloading an attachment, and I'm talking about an 1.5-year-old high-end phone where I can do pretty much anything otherwise. In a high-end PC, it also takes a long while to download attachments, and when the connection is flaky, even reading email is difficult.
There is a "basic" version (which they also advise against) which is significantly better, but still slow and bloated. Yahoo used to be my go-to account back from around 1997, but after the successive iterations of bloat, it's now in a point where I only use it for unimportant website registrations (i.e. spam fodder).
The biggest difference on desktop is you get the old black bar offering links to the 10 or so Google products that actually matter, rather than the dropdown. It also seems to load faster.
I looked at that on my phone and got redirected to the mobile version. JS enable, 4 toolbar buttons, animated image, search bar, a prompt to use my location and a prompt to "install the app."
The current design is closer to the original design. Wait a couple of years, and the design you like will be back. Everything goes in circles for the reasons other people have mentioned above.
