Really, Google?

You had to kill the Gmail Compose page?

I value single-tasking.

There is nothing more distracting than an open email inbox.

Sometimes I have a thought I need to communicate. Sometimes it takes me a while. Sometimes it takes concentration.

That is why I had your Gmail Compose page bookmarked. I could go straight to a platform to communicate my thought without running into the biggest distraction available.

Will someone please, please, please make a reasonable Gmail facsimile that I can pay for, so that I don't have to put up with these arbitrary changes? First the "new look"... now the dead compose page... what next? Why does Gmail keep fixing things that are not broken?

You can still access the old compose page (temporarily) - by clicking the little up arrow on the right hand site of the page. Hopefully they keep both choices available.

One less than perfect alternative is to use the Shift-c shortcut which will give you a compose window in a new window. Its not the same as your bookmarked compose view but it'll block most of your inbox. I'm with you though . . .

The old compose _was_ broken (at least for me). I encounter the use case where I need to reference data from another email when composing a new message all the time. This used to mean opening up a new gmail tab, with the new compose I can draft an email while jumping around through archived messages. That's a big win.

Yuck. Google's not going to be satisfied until either Google+ is integrated into everything and is a huge success, or is integrated into everything and kills the company. Once I leave Gmail and Google search, there's not much left for me on Google.

Edit: also, I think this focus on Google+ is myopic. They want all the data Facebook has on us. You're telling me that they can't put together a good picture of my entire life and pretty much exactly what to market to me between Google Analytics, Gmail, Google Search, YouTube, Google Play, Android, Google Drive, Calendar, Google Books, Google Groups, AdSense, Google DNS, and Maps? Maybe they should take all that Google+ budget and devote it to datamining their successful products. Anyhow, I hope Linus enjoys his own little social network, he's the only one I know who uses it.