> And whenever I find a contrived way to do one of those things, more often than not, a couple of weeks later it's taken out by a new "simplification".

This seems to be a running gag for all of Google's services, the past few years. Like moving around and changing the "log out" button (did I say button, it's a link now), then for a while inconveniencing people circumventing that via Private Tab. It's awful.

It's like they're trying to numb you into compliance to go with whatever flow the UI-of-the-week directs you into.