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Google is pretty, downright beautiful in fact.

Notice I said that pretty is good, but not the only good.

Myspace and Craigslist 'can't' make beautiful products, Myspace because that would detract from user personalization, and Craigslist because they never hired the design muscle because it works well enough.

The grand-parent is merely suggesting that Pretty is good and ugly is bad. NOT saying that is the only thing that matters. So your comment is not a refutation. (and hence, I see no reason for sarcasm either.)

Google and Craigslist are minimalist relics that do a job and do it well. They're too plain to be _ugly_.

MySpace is popular with the same personalizing crowd that would put stickers on their MacBooks.

I disagree that craigslist does what it does well. I think it does it extremely poorly. They've managed to get a huge critical mass though which means people will deal with the flaws because its where the content is.

And for all we know, both would be twice as popular with good design.

People don't have an emotional connection to classified ads or search results. This was an epiphany for me which I detail here: http://ourdoings.com/2008-02