They're not out of touch with what their customers want. Many of them didn't like them because of the whole "Android is cheap" dilemma (which is BS). The users asked and they got. The people who did like them are a very small, specific, yet vocal group of people.

Where do you take that from? To me, the new ones look way "cheaper", like ripped off WordArt.

They look more like the iOS ones. That's what's important (even though I think the overuse of gradients makes iOS emoji look dated too).

Oddly Facebook Messenger seems to have the best set [1], for my eyes.

[1] https://emojipedia.org/messenger/

No they don't. They look like a shitty replica of them made by someone who understands nothing about art. Just because they both have "gradients" means nothing. iOS has smooth 3D gradients. These have a plain and awful looking linear gradient from top to bottom with two colors. The messenger one you linked has so much detail and personality. These ones have neither. They are, as mentioned above, like cheap Clipart. If you honestly can't see the difference between the one you linked and these new Android ones, then I don't know what to tell you.

I suspect the reason for the update was to bring the Android emoji more in line with Apple's, which are generally considered the standard emoji.