Since GNOME 3.0 has been delayed until March, 2011, it seems there's enough time to rethink the way GNOME Shell looks, especially since a lot of people don't like it (especially from the usability point of view).
Some new GNOME Shell mockups were uploaded to GIT recently, showing a lot of similarities with Ubuntu / UNE:
Gedit / Nautilus:
A closer look at Nautilus:
As you can see, Nautilus looks a lot like Nautilus Elementary. We already talked about this, but this is the first mockup of the new default Nautilus which Elementary bits and pieces.
Then there's a new GNOME Shell look which looks incredibly close to Ubuntu's Unity:
Even the Search seems to be inspired by Unity's Dash:
I don't know about you, but for me a GNOME Shell like in these mockups is definitely more usable than how Shell is right now. If we can get a usable working GNOME 3.0, it doesn't really matter who inspired who!
What do you think?
In case you don't know how Nautilus Elementary / Unity look like, I suggest you see these:
