Does anyone else find it humorous that OP's site is ugly and hard to read? it doesn't diminish he's point (I could take or leave the new Gmail) but maybe his credibility.
Just to take one point: the icons are confusing at first, but mail is something you daily for years, and Gmail has always been optimized for power users, so even though it might take you a week or two to get used to the icons, it's a benefit because now a greater percentage of the words on the screen are actually your email content.
Nice big text with high, but not too high, contrast. What's not to like?
To be fair to the blogger, he probably is also a victim here: he's probably reusing a theme (edit: yep, scroll to the bottom) whose designer committed the tiny-text idiocy.
At least he didn't do low contrast and tiny text like most other sites do (e.g., posterous). :)