for example, my firefox looks like something out of windows 95, but if i want to pretend i'm using i3, f11 -> fullscreen, ctrl+tab and i'm set. and if i want to see a bookmark toolbar, url bar, tabs, a title bar, and a menu, i can. why not?
and yeah, the real goodness (which is not unique to gnome3) is the snap alignment stuff and ease of using virtual desktops and setting keyboard shortcuts. gnome3 could be a lot worse than it is. (edit: for me, everything gnome3 does, kde does better, but gnome3 "just works" a lot better than kde and, to some degree, unity. i'd rather be using i3 generally, but that can be more effort to maintain than its worth in certain situations)