I wonder if this is the first impact of a new CEO. There were a number of complaints about the loss of the "stay in touch" functionality. Their focus "Lightning fast search and a view on email that works the way your brain does – by people" would seem to include "stay in touch."

Deleting functionality is a tricky decision, this is one area where SaaS gives a startup an advantage since it's much easier to measure real usage patterns.

Why remove it? They can simply make it hidden by default and to enable you go to preferences.

Less code surface area means less potential bugs to fix that would distract from improving the core functionality.

Because they can? Steve Jobs would be proud.

I liked my headline better before the moderators or whatever got to it:

"xobni releases major feature: Search bar now purple."

i looks a lot cleaner now than the previous one.