Consider that, when we make a change and then test it extensively, we have a lot of data at our disposal to tell us whether it's a positive change in the aggregate. If you're going to claim that someone is "trying to justify their role by breaking things which weren't broken", you had better have similarly good data, from hundreds of millions of users, that shows that, indeed, we made things worse overall; and you had also better be privy to the actual design conversations that happened so you know when people are acting in bad faith. I don't believe either of those things is true.
When you claim that we "blatantly disregard" the user experience, or "can't hack constructive criticism", what you're really saying is "the team didn't do what I want on this issue". But equating "I didn't get what I want" to us being malicious and incompetent does not give you the moral high ground; it just makes you sound shrill and makes your opinion less likely to be thoughtfully considered, except by people who are already inclined to agree.
We _have_, in fact, considered the various issues people have raised with the new NTP, and suggestions have been kicked around as to how to address those issues, so you may see changes in the future. Completely reverting the NTP, however, is not one of those suggestions, because the new NTP is massively improved on all kinds of important user satisfaction metrics. Reverting it, in our opinion, would harm the overall UX for a large fraction of our userbase, and we have a moral duty to consider their well-being, _not just the opinions of the few who complain_.
Frankly, in the end, we can't make everyone happy with Chrome. Inevitably, everything we do is going to feel like a net loss to some group of people. Our goal is to not make that group larger than we have to, but it's never going to be empty. If you're not one of those well-served by Chrome's design decisions, you may be better served by another browser, and if so, by all means, use it. The goal in the end is for everyone to have good choices among many good browsers.
And regarding locking threads: at some point, we're not going to continue arguing endlessly. There is nothing to be gained by it; if our actions for the last six years as stewards of Chrome's user interface have not convinced you that we have our users' best interests paramount, then a few more paragraphs on some discussion thread aren't either. So yes, we can and will lock bugs and feedback threads, so we can stop spending time Arguing On The Internet (see relevant memes) and go back to work trying to fix bugs and make Chrome better.
I'm sorry that nothing I say above is going to make you any happier. I would prefer to make you happy rather than not. But I'm not going to do it by making Chrome worse overall.
Consider that, when we make a change and then test it extensively, we have a lot of data at our disposal to tell us whether it's a positive change in the aggregate. If you're going to claim that someone is "trying to justify their role by breaking things which weren't broken", you had better have similarly good data, from hundreds of millions of users, that shows that, indeed, we made things worse overall; and you had also better be privy to the actual design conversations that happened so you know when people are acting in bad faith. I don't believe either of those things is true.
When you claim that we "blatantly disregard" the user experience, or "can't hack constructive criticism", what you're really saying is "the team didn't do what I want on this issue". But equating "I didn't get what I want" to us being malicious and incompetent does not give you the moral high ground; it just makes you sound shrill and makes your opinion less likely to be thoughtfully considered, except by people who are already inclined to agree.
We _have_, in fact, considered the various issues people have raised with the new NTP, and suggestions have been kicked around as to how to address those issues, so you may see changes in the future. Completely reverting the NTP, however, is not one of those suggestions, because the new NTP is massively improved on all kinds of important user satisfaction metrics. Reverting it, in our opinion, would harm the overall UX for a large fraction of our userbase, and we have a moral duty to consider their well-being, _not just the opinions of the few who complain_.
Frankly, in the end, we can't make everyone happy with Chrome. Inevitably, everything we do is going to feel like a net loss to some group of people. Our goal is to not make that group larger than we have to, but it's never going to be empty. If you're not one of those well-served by Chrome's design decisions, you may be better served by another browser, and if so, by all means, use it. The goal in the end is for everyone to have good choices among many good browsers.
And regarding locking threads: at some point, we're not going to continue arguing endlessly. There is nothing to be gained by it; if our actions for the last six years as stewards of Chrome's user interface have not convinced you that we have our users' best interests paramount, then a few more paragraphs on some discussion thread aren't either. So yes, we can and will lock bugs and feedback threads, so we can stop spending time Arguing On The Internet (see relevant memes) and go back to work trying to fix bugs and make Chrome better.
I'm sorry that nothing I say above is going to make you any happier. I would prefer to make you happy rather than not. But I'm not going to do it by making Chrome worse overall.
Locking.