OK, this is bizarre. If I turn on “Activity Monitor” (a utility app if you have a Mac), then the navigation bar of Google turns black. How can this happen?!
Hmm, that might not be it. The nav bar on Google was black. It turned back to the regular black. And now it’s white again. Bizarre.
Thoughts on the black Google navigation bar? I can’t get rid of it now.
Seems I’ve answered my own question:
Since no one else posted in your thread, I will to say “Congratulations on finding your own answer”. :applause smiley: 
Huh. I assumed they canned that, as I complained about it, and later it disappeared. Or maybe that was some other navbar change.
I know I got them to not put your real name on top, as that’s useless if you have multiple Gmail accounts.
Google is famous for experimenting. Just because you saw a change and then it disappeared for you doesn’t mean that they “canned it”.
Also, somehow I doubt that you were the one that got them to not put the real name in the nav bar–especially because it still works that way. (If you’re signed in with one account, it shows your real name, but if you log in with two accounts, it reverts to showing the usernames automatically. It’s worked that way since the new nav bar launched.)