Isn't this a good indication that the performance problem if gmail may not be related to the "bloat" of the frontend itself?
It might suggest that the frontend isn't the only issue, at least - and maybe this explains why it's usually so slow, if the frontend can be fast on a fast enough backend. On the other hand, the speed of the "basic HTML" version implies that the frontend can be the issue.
Entirely possible as well that the "basic HTML" uses different API service in the background that are snappier for comparative lack of users.
I always thought gmail being slow is because of me using firefox but now it's surprisingly snappy. What the hell is going on?
Wow, it's faster in firefox than it used to be in chrome... while in chrome it's almost isntanteneous