I was not one of those people who followed the beta testing and wheel out of iGoogle. I discovered it one afternoon when I tried to reload iGoogle from that morning, it changed. When I expressed surprise, my coworker who uses Google.cn was like, umm, my iGoogle always looked like that.. I wonder if she is aesthetically blind or this was just a migration.
But do you imagine that everyone would like changes? Thousands of annoyed users might sound significant except when we consider the millions? of iGoogle users. Google isn't going to base it's decisions on .0001% of its population. I will admit, though, it might have been nice to offer a) the option/ability to revert, b) left-hand navigation minimization
To be honest, I am one of the happy users with this interface. I do not think the navi takes up such a significant part of the screen and on my laptop real estate is an issue. I do not understand why ppl dislike how the GMail gadget operates because the last one was about intolerable. Privacy is an issue? I would have top open a tab to read an email, in order to keep iGoogle open, and it would occupy larger, more obvious/readable screen area than its behavior does now. How huge is your monitor and font that someone could innocently glance part of the 1st line of your email body? Do all of your friends open emails with "f#(k1n $h1t!!!"? What am i missing? :P
As for updates- Adobe, Firefox and iGoogle routinely clash anyway. Stuff breaks, they fix it. Ppl complain that things don't work as though we should believe that this would be a permanent situation. Give them a minute, get some air. It will work, and probably, in short order.