There's a simple explanation for recent GUI disasters across google applications: Google+. They decided to make a Swiss Army Knife under the banner of Google+, and needed kind of "consistency" of style. Everything is consistency ugly now, and Google+ guy is gone. Situation may improve as they starts dismantling the monstrosity. With respect to search quality - they hired some AI astronauts, neural networks do wonders for them. The goal is to train their system to accommodate astronauts' brains. They say it openly.