I don't care for the gendered/colored emojis, some people want them, I ignore them, everyone is happy.

But I really don't understand replacing the blobs with yet another boring variation of Apple emojis, like Twitter, FB, Samsung, ... I'm also a big fan and I believe it's a unique feature that makes Android stand out (even before KitKat, the green droids were pretty fun). I always found Android apps that embed Apple emojis infuriating, but now everyone will get ugly emojis, I guess it solves the problem.