When I first joined Google, my first team manager was Marissa Mayer.
One of her main achievements, as I was told by the rest of the team, was to keep google.com clean of advertisements and various other crap during the early years of the company.

People quickly realized that if they can only put a little button or a link that lead to their product or feature, it would instantly get used by millions of people. The temptation was high, the motivation was there, and it took tremendous discipline to keep the page clean. That story I am sure, is still told in some form or another to product managers and UX designers that join google today. And the page is still pretty clean (although stuff started creeping in).

However, it seems to me that the gMail UX designer didn't get the memo. Or may be he or she (or they) is just too busy with something else?
I feel that all those things that are linked to from the main gmail page are in the same category, namely - other Google products. Why are they spread all over the place? Why can I hide the right panel but not the left one, and why is it persistently coming back when I add an email to tasks?

When I was a Google employee, there was a way to bring up these issues at the company-wide meeting, or simply find who was responsible for this page, email them, and they would at least consider fixing it. I miss having that channel. /end rant