So why isn't any telling Larry that this idea isn't working that well? I thought Google was the kind of place the higher ups could tell the CEO that his idea wasn't so hot?

Fwiw, this search for 'beautiful consistent look across products' doesn't seem to be confined to Google. Yahoo Groups had a decent interface till they introduced a completely broken, unusable new look named "Neo". Just thinking about how unusable this made using Groups, makes me angry.