http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/google-homepage-new-design.html
http://www.popherald.com/google-plus-early-review/7740
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/06/29/why-is-the-google-bar-black/
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/06/28/what-is-google-and-can-it-succeed-where-buzz-and-wave-failed/
and if you don't like how it looks or where it appears, how to remove it:
http://gizmodo.com/5816772/how-to-get-rid-of-googles-big-black-bar
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/06/30/how-to-get-hide-the-black-google-bar-or-change-it-back-to-white/
I voiced my concern about it after a day or two (I thought I'd give it a chance before damning Google's name to the four winds)... the lack of contrast really kills it for me, I really can't see anything other than the highlighted item unless I get right close to the screen (and honestly, I'm already about 6" away from the screen at any time).
It irks me that Google puts this stuff up with no way to disable it...
The best term for it I've heard is the "Looming Bar of Evil" (That Watches You in the Silence) lol >:D
Can't imagine why the desktop menu is so bad.
The new mobile look is very slick
http://www.tipb.com/2011/05/28/google-slowly-rolling-webapp-ui/
It's bizarre, that's for sure, the mobile version looks like what I want the desktop version to be like: high contrast, everything where you want it.
I still can't believe it's two clicks and a menu to log out of GMail.
I don't know what asshattery has taken over at Google but I'm finding their search engine to be less accurate and their GUI to be more ugly as time progresses.
Egad! There's management afoot!
Mr. A did you try any of my links for disabling it?
Not sure if you're a Greasemonkey monkey, but sounds like that's one easy of tweaking it into oblivion.
I found a lot of notes on how to disable via GreaseMonkey, but that's not the point. I shouldn't have to munge Google's HTML