It's amazing to me how much these companies spend on redesigns that add nothing but rounded corners one year, then sharp corners next year, and so on...
A friend of mine worked for a FAANG company and he taught me that people get promoted for creating something "new" rather than improving something that already exists.
As someone who's worked for such companies since the mid-90's, it's common knowledge that run-and-maintain isn't appreciated, only doing new things is.
Someone who keeps things from failing is much more at risk during layoffs than those who work only on new projects.
As someone who works for a similar company now, this notion and the success of this strategy/mindset greatly exaggerated.
Considering how often new projects get axed at Google you couldn't possibly be safer on average than working on a golden goose (like Search/Android/Maps/etc).
It's busy work to justify a lot of positions. Think how many people are needed even for a minor change like that in an organization as large and bloated as google
I literally can't even tell the difference between the first set of pictures other than the new one looks like it has an added advertisement on the center panel.