Donald Norman: Google is not simple. I do agree.

I think it's a bad misconception to say that the less elements an interface has, the better it is. In fact, our cognitive abilities enable us to tune out extra visual information. Furthermore, when needed, user's focus can be guided through visual cues. This gives us the possibility to put a lot of information on one screen, thus we can minimize navigation, which is one of the most important usability principles, if not the most important. I am not saying it's easy to design an interface filled with a lot of information, but I am saying, that the resulting interface, if done with skill, will be more usable if it has more elements on one screen.

Google is a great search engine, but Google is bad interface to Google's services.