I agree with everything you've said. Plus, the page is so javascript-heavy, it probably crawls in IE6. It already makes my scrolling a little less smooth. Interface responsiveness and discoverability trump flashiness and visual minimalism.<p>Other nitpicks: the slightly grey (cream?) background is a weird, subtle annoyance, and the lack of <i>any</i> underlined links would definitely get Nielsen's panties in a bunch.<p>One thing I think the (re)designer did get right: The AJAX-loading down arrow at the bottom of the page. I wonder if there's any reason Google hasn't tried something like this over their more traditional pagination model. I'm guessing it has something to do with advertising and/or existing SEO conventions of referring to result ranking by Google page #.