Is it just me, or does GMail seem to have become a bit of a low-priority backwater in Google's grand design? There's a difference between simplicity and abandonware, and they're nudging it.
It must be just you, because they've kept adding things that I've found immensely useful like imap and pop checking for other nongmail-accounts. I think they do a lot behind the scenes to make it great.
Gmail also works great. At some point a design reaches a limit as to how much better it can be.
