Thibault Sottiaux, the OpenAI genius in charge of Codex and the new ChatGPT Homer Simpson car, on Twitter/X:

I don’t come often to GMail [sic] (OpenAI is a Slack company), but I swear, every time I do open it, there is a new button somewhere around the top right corner.
I mean, he’s right about Google’s zero-taste just-keep-cramming-shit-in approach to Gmail, but it’s almost hard to believe he could post this without any self-awareness that it’s the exact same approach his Codex team has applied to ChatGPT.
Gmail debuted in 2004 (androidpolice.com/20-years-of-gmail) homely but wonderfully simple (which I’d argue was Google’s original, but now long-lost (daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/12/google-design-pants-pissed) UI brand). It was just your email. Now it’s too complex to explain. ChatGPT’s original incarnation was attractive-in-today’s-minimalist-fad-way and wonderfully simple. It was just AI chat. Now it’s too complex to explain.
(ChatGPT’s original incarnation still exists, in the form of the hard-to-find-if-you-don’t-already-have-it-installed Coke ChatGPT Classic (daringfireball.net/linked/2026/07/11/ca...plain-to-me-how-to-get-chatgpt-classic), just like how Gmail, after Google started needlessly complicating it, used to have a “classic” view that many users preferred (theverge.com/23316378/gmail-old-design-back-how-to) but Google soon took away (theverge.com/2022/11/8/23447929/google-...l-redesign-integrated-chat-meet-spaces).)
★ (daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/18/op...-complains-that-google-kettle-is-black)