An Airbnb PM writes a love letter to the Google Chrome team about all-blue tab icons. A Google PM replies with the perfect comeback. Two brands, on each other's side, in public.
I came across a LinkedIn post this morning that made me smile and then made me sit with it for a second longer than I expected.
A Product Manager at Airbnb posted an open letter to the Google Chrome PMs. The tone was warm, exasperated, and exactly the kind of feedback you'd give a friend who'd done something slightly silly in public.
Dear Google Chrome PMs,
Thank you so much for the incredible work you've done with tabs. Until last week, every Google product had a distinct icon in a distinct colour, so I could tell at a glance which of my 50 open tabs was my inbox, my calendar, docs vs sheets vs slides vs sites. Life was good.
Then someone decided to get cute and artsy, and now every tab is the same homogenous shade of blue. Do you understand how hard it is to navigate a dozen of these windows all day, every day?
Why, pray, why would you do this?
If you're done patting yourselves on the back for how fast you shipped this with AI, could you please roll it back to a UX that was genuinely user-friendly?
Sincerely, a user who just wants to share the right tab on a Zoom call.
2,600+ likes. 119 comments. 16 reposts. Most-relevant comment underneath: "So relatable." Sure. But the comment that made the whole thing land was the reply from a Google PM who didn't get defensive, didn't get corporate, didn't ignore it. He just lobbed the ball back, gently, with a smile.
Find me the PM that decided to play hide & seek with Airbnb hosts who are trying to download their earning report CSV. I'll find you the PM for the tabs. 😂 🙈 💪
That single line is the whole thing.
Two brands, helping each other in public
Notice what just happened. A user reported a bug. The maker acknowledged it. And then the maker — on his own initiative — reported a different bug back, on behalf of his friends inside Airbnb's product who are quietly struggling with something only an insider would know. No PR team. No reply guy. No takedown. Just I see you, you see me, let's both go fix it.
The trade is beautiful: you tell my PMs what's broken in our product; I'll tell yours what's broken in theirs. Two competing companies, two strangers, doing each other's customer research for free, in public, with affection. The brands look better for the exchange than either looked before it.
What the platform rewards, when it's used well
I keep being told social media is a sewer. It can be. But it can also be this: a place where a single well-crafted note from one practitioner reaches the exact other practitioner who needs to hear it, and a useful conversation begins in the open where everyone learns from it.
The post worked because the Airbnb PM wrote it as a customer who loves the product, not as a peer trying to score. The reply worked because the Google PM answered as a craftsman, not as an employee. Neither hid behind their badge. Both let the badge make the exchange more interesting, not more careful.
What I'm taking from it
Three small things, mostly notes to myself.
Feedback travels further when it's affectionate. The post would not have moved through the network the way it did if it had been angry. Why, pray, why is funny. Why, pray, why gets shared. Why, pray, why reaches the person who can actually do something about it.
The best reply to a complaint is sometimes another complaint, returned with a wink. The Google PM could have apologised. He could have explained. Instead he treated the Airbnb PM as a peer and proved that craftsmen on both sides care about the same kind of small, daily-life-paper-cut problems. That's a more honest answer than an apology.
Brands are made of people, and people are allowed to be people in public. The two badges in the byline made the exchange feel weighty. The two human voices underneath the badges made it feel possible. That mix — institutional weight, human voice — is what most companies are still afraid to let their teams use. The ones who let them, win the room.
Two PMs. One tab redesign. One hidden CSV. And a small, public reminder that the network can still be on its best behaviour when the people on it choose to be.
An Airbnb PM and a Google PM, on LinkedIn, May 2026. Names left out on purpose — the moment matters more than the people. Quoted here with affection for both.