So I’m a bit late on this but it seems Google refreshed their search index user interface this Wednesday. I just noticed it today (yup, I’ve been busted using Bing…).
What do I think of it?
What I have noticed that is it sort of reminds me of Bing. Yup, you heard me right. It reminds me of Bing.
Layout Design
Original: In the old design, you had the page broken into four sections. You had the access panel at the top, advertising set on the right, navigation below and in the main area your search index results.
New:In the new design they introduce on the left hand side the same access panel but add more options to further refine your search. Very Bing Like!
Overall Assessment: It looks like they are trying to go in the direction of helping users further refine their search results by content type, relevancy, and dates published. It’s decent but I would love to see the statistics on how often people use them and if they found their search experience improved with these changes.
Navigation
Original: There was no scroll bar appearing at the bottom of my page.
New: Their UX seems to not have taken the page size into account. I found that my search index is slightly compressed horizontally and more often than not I am finding a scroll bar appear on my browser window, the bottom scroll bar (which was never present before)
Overall Assessment: Not good, especially for your advertisers whose ads appear on the right-hand side. Now their adds are cut off. Even worse is for mobile users that now can view only half of the middle left hand portion of the box for each items displayed in the search result page. Double Not good.
Consistency
Original: Links were all the same color.
New: As a program manager, I remember one thing I was nit picky about was consistency. So this might be a small thing but why do we have two shades of blue introduced in the search index page? The links are all in the standard dark blue color yet the links at the bottom, soft blue (very close to the blue shade I recall Microsoft payed 9-figures for).
Overall Assessment: Some don’t care, but it makes your page not look very professional.
Overall Design
Original: Familiar, associated it with Google.
New: Reminds me of Bing now
Overall Assessment: Whenever your design reminds people of your competitor (no matter how small of a competitor they are) it is not good!
What do you think of the new changes Google introduced? I’d love to hear your impression.
Graduate with B.A.Sc with a formal academic background in Electrical Engineering. Previous occupations include Product Marketing, Software Testing/Developer and Hardware Engineer. I have a great passion for technology and am always searching for what new things we can expect in the next wave. 
Would increase readability if you bold your subheadings.