Aesthetics over Usability – Google's New App Icons

So much visual processing required to even guess at what they are trying to show.

The funny thing is they had to put a '31' in the middle of box as a last ditch effort to help you work out it's not a document icon.

Google needs to have more brave voices internally that clearly would have raised objections and concerns about this design.

Why did they let them get released, are there some odd politics going on internally there?