I used both Gerrit and Critique. There are some similarities, and some configurations of Gerritt can be similar. But... Critique is not git based. And so a lot

I used both Gerrit and Critique. There are some similarities, and some configurations of Gerritt can be similar. But... Critique is not git based. And so a lot of the complexity around rebasing & commit management is just not there. Nor is the stuff about patch-oriented workflow, etc. It's a much simpler mental model (central monorepo built on a fork of Perforce, though they've added some DVCS stuff with 'fig' onto that since), and consistent across the whole giant monorepo. Some of the pleasantness comes from that. Some of the decisions and twiddly knobs in Gerrit probably come from Google teams wanting some of the Critique (or Mondrian before it) workflow, but on top of Git. The UI in Critique is somehow a little more consistent and fluid and attractive. Many of the keybindings in Gerrit come straight from Critique, and having keybindings is one of the things that makes both of them much nicer to work with than the crap in GitHub, etc. Gerrit is also extremely configurable, as you've pointed out. The query language is one thing they have in common with each other, and it's very nice. In my last year at Google I went back to working in Google3&Critique after working in Gerrit & git for some years, and I quite enjoyed it.