I recognize this color isn't for everyone, and you can change it in the settings.

Sweet! Would be great if you could preview the change without going back to search.

Agreed -- that would be useful :). And it is on the (albeit long) list!

I agree. The red bar is a little too attention-grabbing. I want to look at the search results, not the top bar.

There is the initial reaction and then there is living with it for a while. It has been de-saturated a lot, and after a pretty small time it blends in.

Can you explain this please? I like the colour... I'm not a "proper designer" though.

I do not really like it either, might be "hypochondria" though and probably a different reason. To me it feels close to my eyes than the rest of the page. But the rest of the page are the search results, ie the stuff I am actually interested in.

I really dislike the sponsored link. Its tinting is very subtle and thus it blends into the site too well. Feels dishonest to me. Gonna CSS block it.

edit: Actually I guess I will use the non-JS version (nice!). Never knew about that. It has bugs (the whole result "box" is highlighted like on the normal site but you still have to click the title of the page, no problem but the highlight made me expect differently). It is also drastically faster for me, 5 times surely.

"Its tinting is very subtle and thus it blends into the site too well. Feels dishonest to me. Gonna CSS block it."

The tinting looks pretty strong to me. I think you may want to check the settings of your display.

The tinting is not that low -- maybe depends on your monitor but open to other colors. In any case, you can completely turn off advertising in the settings.