When development stops, the project is dead. It's that simple. I don't even think that point is worth analogies or comparisons.

With regards to GMail... The funny thing is, Google share the *same* opinion I've always expressed regarding GMail. They bought Sparrow and its talent precisely because the design of GMail is garbage.

Here's a nice video that expresses exactly my thoughts when I head the news:

Boing Boing's How to prepare for Google's acquisition of Sparrow video guide:
http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/how-to-prepare-for-googles-a.html

Hey, I'm not trying to be contrarian, I just have high standards, and Google pushes and scrapes the bottom of the barrel in much of what they do.