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Unfortunately, there are too many standard programs out there that need Gnome to run. I can't see Ubuntu using XFCE but still requiring Gnome installed; for newbies that would not be worth the effort. XFCE has a steeper learning curve than Gnome for people coming from Windows.

does this still apply with gnome3? it does not seem very close to a windows experience to me.

Personally, I hate XFCE - it's like an interface pulled from 1995. Desktops evolved since then.

Yes they have evolved. Not necessarily for the better IMHO.

Actually the difference in performance/resources between a very light WM and gnome is not that big nowadays.

On my 4 years old netbook I run compiz stand alone as WM and I am not getting any slower than xfwm or openbox

In some of the performance comparisons with Gnome, XFCE ends up consuming almost as many resources as Gnome. That's one of the reasons Lubuntu came into existence.

Sounds right, but I doubt that's true with compiz