The real answer is that Google's promotion and hiring processes don't respect front end developers. Systems programming and distributed systems are considered "hard" and worthy of reward. This explains why Google's front ends are bad, and it also explains why there's a proliferation of non-composable distributed systems inside Google. As a second order effect, the design of those back ends also make it harder to make fast front ends.<p>And front end devs are often using tools designed for back end devs, like the Bazel build system. (Compare that to FB having online / incremental compilers for Hack, as far as I understand.)<p>So they either don't get the best people working on front ends, or the people they have aren't doing their best work because they're looking to move into a role that may be more respected or rewarded.<p>Before 2005, Google built two of the most innovative AJAX apps ever: GMail and Maps. People may not remember how awesome they were. When GMail came out, it was faster than Microsoft Outlook on desktop, which I was using at the time. You would click and your message would appear instantly, which was not true of desktop apps. The app startup time was also better than desktop! (i.e. seeing all your messages from a cold start)<p>When Maps came out, people didn't believe that the scrolling and zooming could be done without a Flash app. It also had incredibly low latency.<p>But somewhere along the way the company lost its leadership and expertise in the web front end, which I find very sad. (I worked there for many years, but not on front ends.) The slow Google+ app circa 2011 was a great example of that, although I believe the structural problem had set in before that project.<p>I don't think there's any question that FB and even MS are significantly more accomplished in these areas. They're the "thought leaders" (React, Reason, TypeScript, etc.)<p>---<p>edit: Also, if you want to remember what Google UI looked like circa 2005, look at sourcehut: <a href="https://man.sr.ht/" rel="nofollow">https://man.sr.ht/</a><p>It was fast, simple, and had a minimalist style (though some people mistake that for no style). There is probably a generation of people who are scratching their heads at that claim, but yes that's pretty much what Google used to look like: the home page, which lacked JS; News; Groups; Webmaster Tools; Ads front end to some extent, etc.