If Gmail wasn’t remote POP access-capable, I wouldn’t go near it. It’s as simple as that.

iGoogle, or whatever the “make Google your Home page” is called, is another issue: We have modules, but, unlike the early versions where a simple click on a module label would “expand/dropdown” the current content, we now have a dropdown list, which is only accessed through a minute icon (arrow), where “Expand this module” is located below “delete.”

Ask yourself, for the average user, what is most likely the intuitive action upon selecting the module? Put it this way: What would be the likely ratio of “views” to “deletes” for any given user-chosen, user-selected module? My experience is that a module that was loaded and then decided against might happen at the most, one time. If I wasn’t using a trackball, or, in emergencies, a mouse, and was confined to a track PAD, I wouldn’t go near iGoogle, either.

Grade on usability (not to mention, intuitiveness): F
Grade on “design” as a result: F

I like google’s applications. I think – whilst they are often not aesthetically indulgent – they are well designed. Chrome would be my favourite browser if it used the latest webkit release.

You can design a chair that looks visually very appealing to the eye. But then you sit on it and you get piles within 3 minutes. Bad design.

I think Google seem to design things in the right order – keep it simple and get it working. Their apps almost look like wire-frames in their design (and when you consider that many of them all still beta, that’s acceptable). I have also noticed that they are getting a little more sophisticated in terms of aesthetics and visual principles, which I predict will continue to happen.

You also have to realise that Google is a brand. A brand which is very simple and that puts usability first (which yes, like everyone, they get right and wrong to varying degrees). I also find it quite an asexual brand, tbh.

The whole male / female thing: such a complex fuzzy-edged subject I think to bring it into this context stinks of over indulgence on Joe’s part. “Look at the clever words I know”.

I also imagine there were many factors which led to Bowman’s exit. Or perhaps not, I don’t know. His article suggests that the way things were working, and the fact that data was dictating design, influenced his decision to move on. Perhaps, though, Google’s philosophy was just not right for Bowman, rather than it just no being right full stop.

And they used to say blacks couldn’t vote, because their minds weren’t sophisticated enough to understand the complexity of the political system. There are still people who will bring up “proofs” of physical differences between the brains of blacks and whites.

If you want to trash Google, go for it. But gratuitously dragging in supposed differences in brain activity between men and women to provide some form of “proof” for your opinion is only going to a) perpetuate stereotypes, and b) distract from what forms the real basis of your rant: that you think Google sucks from a design perspective, and Bowman is good, and they are _bad_.

There are subtle differences in brain chemistry and makeup between men and women, as autism studies have demonstrated (in my opinion, more conclusively). But the challenges facing women today have far less to do with what we are born with, then what society tells us. Or worse, how society constrains us. I recommend reading the debate between Stephen Pinker (Susan’s brother) and Elizabeth Spelke on the nature/nurture issue.

Regardless, rant away at Google, but don’t expect not to be challenged when you drag in such bilge as women aren’t ad executives because our brains aren’t wired that way.

There’s no “gender stereotyping” in my post, except inasmuch as I accuse Google of practising it without even knowing. The research cited by Pinker (and colleagues like Gurian) is based on scans of upwards of 28,000 brains and simply isn’t controversial, nor has it been discredited. (You seem to think The Sexual Paradox and Leadership and the Sexes are latter-day Bell Curves; they aren’t.)

Male and female brains are, on average, different, and those differences begin in utero, not after nasty sexist society socializes or brainwashes boys and girls.

So-called bridge brains are those that manifest noticeable characteristics of the opposite gender. Many female computer programmers might have bridge brains. This would be a relatively straightforward matter to study; that’s why we have PETT scanners and the like. Incidentally, it seems evident to me from a lifetime of experience that gay and lesbian (sic) brains tend to be bridge brains. I’m not going to cite a source for that beyond my own speculation.

Yet nothing, absolutely nothing, in the above says anything about any individual brain. We’re talking about populations, about rules that have exceptions. Maybe you’re one of them. Bowman is an exception who flunked Google’s unremitting application of its own rules.

But I totally don’t like the Joe Clark’s article. What does it mean a sentence like this one:

Google was founded by extreme-male-brain nerds and, by all outward appearances, seems to hire only that type of person, not all of them male. Apart from Bowman, I can think of only two Google employees I could stand to be around for longer than an elevator ride.

How many google employees Joe Clark should know to give some value to this sentence?

By the way, if I try to figure out what an “extreme-male-brain nerd” looks like, I think that the picture here could be a good answer.

(I am only joking Joe, don’t send me your excellent lawyer)