There's bugs, and then there's "major app feature is literally unusable for the entire non-English-speaking world and also English speakers can't use apostrophes or emoji". For years. Google, you're good at killing things. If you don't care about IMAP/SMTP support, kill it.

i wonder when the last person at Google who cared about users was fired or shuffled away

They're still there, they just don't get to actually exercise that care much these days.