I think your particular Gmail issue exists because they want mobile web and touch screen web users (there are dozens of us!) to be able to tap the recipient to show the user card, like hover does for mouse users. To support your usecase (click to directly edit recipient), touch, click, and hover need to have different actions, which may upset some other users. Unless you mean double click to edit, which I would support.

I save my energy for more heinous UX changes. For example, the YouTube comment chyron has spoiled so many videos for me and is just so generally obnoxious.