Minimalism rocks; I'm very much a fan of Mayer's design style. However, the one thing that I think could be improved for Google search results would be a simple bit of padding on the left border for the search results page; I firebugged the code for a mockup here: http://zentu.net/snaps/googleeasyontheeyes

:)

compare with: http://zentu.net/snaps/googlenow

P.S. I know this has little to nothing to do with the original article, but I've been wanting to point out this observation for awhile now. It's semi-related to the topic of design.

Try making a Greasemonkey script to adjust it on your local setup instead and see how it actually works in practice, rather than just how it looks. I have a feeling that it's a bit too much padding and creates an empty gutter that looks like something's missing or gone wrong.

Straying even farther from the article, you could easily give yourself that view of Google with the Stylish add-on for Firefox and a line of CSS.

Oh wow, Stylish rocks, way easier to use than Greasemonkey (for someone that knows CSS at least). Thanks for the tip, I just stripped out ads and the right column of the nytimes.