I've always felt like Google's confusing UI is completely intentional. Making a user feel lost is a great way to make your product seem larger than it really is. If they boiled down their settings and workflows into easy-to-understand screens then your understanding of the entire product could be conceptualized.
Simple example - in the early days of Microsoft Office, every new release would cause office confusion. I learned to say "it's the same product, they just moved things around". My conspiratorial sense was that the confusion was intentional to make users feel lost.
Simple example - in the early days of Microsoft Office, every new release would cause office confusion. I learned to say "it's the same product, they just moved things around". My conspiratorial sense was that the confusion was intentional to make users feel lost.