Being obsessed with metrics is the exact reason something like this would go through. All companies that design to metrics instead of vision always ship the wo

Being obsessed with metrics is the exact reason something like this would go through. All companies that design to metrics instead of vision always ship the worst UI/UX crimes. This is the ideology we have to thank for things like the lightbox sign up forms that block or lock out content if you try to browse without an account on FB/Pintrest etc. You're assuming the metric Google is designing for is still how fast a user gets what they want off site. What if the metric they're designing for is how long someone spends in the Google ecosystem?