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Google should pay more attention to design

I am starting to get really puzzled about Google and design. Really.

I have always been a fan of their minimalistic interfaces. Part of their success is here by the way: they don't use shadows, gradients and the likes... yet it looks good and clean.

If you are a heavy GMail user like me, you have probably seen that Google has just launched themes for GMail:

Some of the themes look good such as minimalist or new blue. However, most of the remaining themes really remind me of the early home pages of the end of 90's: sunset, marina or phantasea to name a few. I have no clue on how people can actually do some email tasks with those themes and don't even get a headache

I am really wondering if Google ever paid attention to design: the list of themes for Google Pages Creator or Google Sites is very small and only a few themes actually look good.

This is a real shame as they could easily pay a few designers or even some of their very own employes (yes, they have some really bright UI people...) to create some very clean and good looking themes for thoses services. I am pretty sure that I wouldn't be the only one to appreciate such an effort isn't it?

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