I am with you guys about the gay crap on the left. It takes up space I don't want taken up by useless information. I looked into the search settings, and it's not modifiable. So, it's a heavy handed move by Google to try to force us to do more with their page.
While complaining might be fun, they fully expect complaints with release, and they really don't care unless it results in people using it less. No matter what change you do, people will complain, after all.
They will change it back if they see their market share go down, that's for sure. So, let's all just use Bing, or Cuil, or whatever else you fancy. No one needs Google, there are competitors that are very painless to use. It's a lot easier than moving from an operating system, or a site like eBay, and people do that. We can switch from Google, easily, and they'll learn they can't be so heavy handed and disrespectful, which is what forcing this crap on us is. If they even gave a settings option I wouldn't be mad, but they didn't. It's an affront.