OpenAI Pot Complains That Google Kettle Is Black

Thibault Sottiaux, the OpenAI genius in charge of Codex and the new ChatGPT Homer Simpson car, on Twitter/X:

I don’t come often to GMail [sic] (OpenAI is a Slack company), but I swear, every time I do open it, there is a new button somewhere around the top right corner.

I mean, he’s right about Google’s zero-taste just-keep-cramming-shit-in approach to Gmail, but it’s almost hard to believe he could post this without any self-awareness that it’s the exact same approach his Codex team has applied to ChatGPT.

Gmail debuted in 2004 homely but wonderfully simple (which I’d argue was Google’s original, but now long-lost UI brand). It was just your email. Now it’s too complex to explain. ChatGPT’s original incarnation was attractive-in-today’s-minimalist-fad-way and wonderfully simple. It was just AI chat. Now it’s too complex to explain.

(ChatGPT’s original incarnation still exists, in the form of the hard-to-find-if-you-don’t-already-have-it-installed Coke ChatGPT Classic, just like how Gmail, after Google started needlessly complicating it, used to have a “classic” view that many users preferred but Google soon took away.)

★ Tuesday, 18 August 2026