Google’s reason for dropping the plus sign from the new tab icon in Chrome

User experience research on our end seems to have confirmed that this change does not decrease usability and in fact can lead to an overall improvement in people’s perceptions of the UI (some participants described the change as “cleaner” or “neater”).

Given this research I would not expect this change to be reverted.

I would also like to note that while we appreciate your input, in general, commenting on closed bugs is almost never going to effectively change the design team’s mind. The bug tracker is a place where we track bugs. We have feedback forums and mailing lists that are more appropriate and effective places to express your opinions and feedback.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=98264

I don’t understand how removing a plus sign from a button that creates a new tab does not decrease usability, but I guess that’s why I am not a UX designer. In any case I decided to take a stab at designing the new settings page for Chrome based on the same design principles:

Looks a lot cleaner to me! What do you think?