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Is Google finally showing some signs of becoming too big for itself?

The reason I bring this up is because of the new version of Gmail. The engineers have supposedly gone back and redone most of the code to make it load faster, but have they sacrificed some of the quality and stability instead?

One of the first changes I noticed was the new “More Actions” drop-down. Instead of letting the browser render its own drop-down (no more select box), the new faux drop-down is designed to fit in better with the general Gmail theme.

Older version:

Newer version:

But that’s now caused me to squint and steady my mouse every time I try to click on what used to be a big clickable select box. Oops, did I get it right in the center? No.. uhh.. guess I don’t have mad minesweeper-accuracy mouse skillz.. so please can I just have my standard browser select box that I’m used to clicking on at every other site that uses one?

But that’s not all (surely, I wouldn’t write a blog post complaining about just a single feature). A problem that I didn’t notice at first, but soon became glaringly obvious is that your Inbox doesn’t always refresh itself to the state it should. So you may have 3 emails waiting to be read, but your Inbox is going to display that you have none. How do I know this if it doesn’t show me the correct count in the first place?

Try this if you have a POP account linked to your Gmail account. Go to Settings > Accounts, and click on “Check mail now” for your POP account. Hopefully, you’ll have at least one email that it downloaded (if not, keep refreshing until a) you have a more popular Inbox or b) you get tired and email yourself). You may notice that it might update to “Checked a minute ago. One mail fetched”. So far so good, but take a look at your Inbox unread count, chances are that it probably won’t have changed. Where did that one unread mail go? Spam folder? Hmm.. nope, it’s sitting in your Inbox. Just click on Inbox a couple (dozen) times until it finally shows you the email.

Google – why must you keep my mails from me? Is it that you can’t show me my emails until you’re completely ready – i.e. having analyzed every word and found at least 4 ads that match my mail?

What else annoys me? Well, I try not to convulse every time I see the errant flickering of the Contact Info box (the one which pops up when you scroll over a contact or email address). Unfortunately, no amount of moving your mouse away from the hover area is going to stop the flickering. Once you’ve had enough convulsions, I suggest hitting a key… any key (uhh… is this similar to the Microsoft any key curse?) – that seems to be the only way to reset the flickering.

Luckily, I don’t seem to be the only one complaining. Users everywhere are experiencing problems ranging from slower loading times to crashing browsers. A Gmail spokesperson had this to say:

“Most users should see a marked improvement in performance. We recommend using IE7 and Firefox 2 to take full advantage of Gmail’s speedier interface,” said spokesman Jason Freidenfelds via e-mail.

I’ll keep my Camino and Safari thank you very much. And like numerous others, I’ll keep switching to the older version of Gmail – every time I login.

Update: Jeremy seems to be having problems with Gmail too.