Hm. The nebula and color gradients feel unnecessary to me, but I think there's potential for innovation in having the recommended searches prominently located on the left sidebar - provided that the recommendations are intelligent enough.

I've thought on more than one occasion while burrowing down with repeated queries that search should involve more of the machine prompting me and less of me guessing at the right keywords. Bing's UI promotes that behavior, whereas my eyes just skip over the recommended queries at the bottom of Google.