It's pretty good UI to give more sparse so as to appeal to more general less technical population. Facebook was one of the early implementers. Look at kid books

It's pretty good UI to give more sparse so as to appeal to more general less technical population. Facebook was one of the early implementers. Look at kid books for an example of how long sparseness and largeness has been going on for. Does Gmail offer an option to classic as a way to retain power/early users?