Except this point isn't about whether or not MG was wrong about how gmail on IOS would rock, this was his observation at the general randomness of Google's product releases with respect to their perceived 'greatness.' He observes that Apple had the iron hand of Steve to control the results. Google used to have the iron hand of Marissa but that changed when she lost out in the big social shuffle.

If you push out whatever any group considers done, and you take away the 'preview' zone that was labs, you have to accept that you are going to push some turds out.

Google's previous product process didn't scale, this new one has quality issues. I'm sure the next one will address that to some extent.