I think the logo clicking decision isn't crazy. My interpretation is that Google is "un-training" users from using this valuable piece of screen real estate for a useless no-op function, in anticipation of putting a more useful function in its place.

Does anyone remember a few weeks back, when Google tested a "new way to browse Google's services"? They turned the logo into a button, producing a drop-down menu of services to navigate to.

My guess is that they found the new logo-button didn't work well, mainly because so many users saw the logo as a big button which refreshed the page or went to the inbox.

At the risk of making predictions, I'd guess this recent change is a grace period, designed to get us all used to using other buttons for reaching the inbox. And once people no longer instinctively click the logo-button, they'll introduce the new navigation which makes better use of that valuable screen space.

I could very well be way off the mark here... but it seems pretty clever to me, TBH.