Not wooshed, but rather washed... By a rather large mass of moving water.

I feel this is done on purpose to direct attention to it.
Previously, it "just was there", as a part of the page. Now they want it to be like an application toolbar - something which lets you select between your apps which appear below it.

I like it quite a bit. Gives a fresh look to the whole Google experience.

In case you weren't trolling, the big mistake is having so many toolbars and file menus. I really like the slick design of Chrome and Firefox. More space for the pages, less space for clutter.
The top bar of Google pages has been reserved for ages now. The only difference is that they added added the Notifications and Share buttons.

I've been with you until the part about Doom 3.
I've played Doom 3, everything on max, dark room - all the things needed to enjoy a dark atmospheric game.... It was *OK*, but felt a bit boring.

Then I fired up jDoom with a 3d model pack and played it with a friend............... DAMN!! That was FUN. Pure unadulterated fun.

Doom 3 is technically superior, but the old Dooms are just funner... And to be honest, the old monsters were SCARIER and much more vile than the new ones.

Or at least not this horrible piece of consolitis-ridden software.
What's up with console ports forcing a 70 degrees FOV? It's too easy to become disoriented and get motion sickness.
What's up with only two weapons? It's the friggin' Duke. I want a full spectrum of guns, not just the latest two.
What's up with no actual save option? I don't want to play the same easy section again and again just to get stuck in the same hard spot.
Regardless, the game is far from polished and not really fun.

Seems like it's the same story as with Doom 3.
When it came out, I was playing some jDoom (original wads, high-res and mouse look) and it was a ton more fun than D3.

I hear countless people praising Duke Nukem HD which is a similar case, while the new game is well... agonizingly mediocre.

That is usually done so you don't accidentally skip a cut-scene if you didn't mean to.
What could work though is something like "hold button X to skip". In which case you can skip it as you will but won't skip it by mistake.

How about on the right of the currently visible tab itself?
This is the tab that interests you right now, so it's intuitive to let it have more space while the other tabs are minimal.

You could even place the URL bar there when double-clicking or ctrl-L-ing.
Or go with the Google approach of a bar underneath only when needed.

Why would anyone need a bookmark toolbar?
It's easier to just type in a letter or two from the bookmark's name and you get it as a first choice.
In Firefox 4 its even easier - Instead of opening the 3-4 sites you normally visit using bookmarks, I just have them open as App Tabs and get live update notifications.

The search bar is even a greater mystery to me. Why do you need to clutter the UI for something you can do from the same address/awesome bar?
I just ctrl-L or ctrl-T and type what I want to search for. In actuality I have an address keyword for different searches:
g for normal Google search
gg for I'm feeling lucky
img for images
vid for video
alpha for Worlfram Alpha
dict for dictionary.com
and so on..

Ya... Like by scrolling to the end of the page where all the answers are, visible to everyone?

The trees don't have to be regenerated but rather updated. It's not that difficult with kd-trees. Surely, it's not optimal, but can give reasonable results.

New hardware supports occlusion testing on the GPU. There's a query method to test how many or if any fragments were actually drawn between the beginning of the query and its end. You can then hierarchically draw bounding boxes and only actually draw the geometry you want.
Check this out.

What's the white space issue?
If you mean the fact it allows mixed tabs and spaces, warning can be issues by the -t command line flag for a long time now in 2.x...

From the top of my head:
- Fixed inconsistencies between the language and functions (print, exec, execfile).
- Obsoleted a ton of legacy code.
- Made a clear cut between the abstract concept of string (internally Unicode) and an array of bytes.
- Better multi-threading support.

You should read into what's done here instead of crying and hating.
You choose to post a Like/Check-in to your wall. That's your choice. Only your friends see it.
Now this like + message appears again on the side where the stupid ads are. Only your friends see it.
Figures you see an ad for something your friends like, it might actually be something good!

As long as only your friends see it, what's the big deal? They could have just as well move these likes the the top of the Top News Feed and no one would ever know.

I use Aero snap a lot. But almost never by dragging.
It's easier for me to use Winkey-left/right/up/down...
However, it is also easier for me to use ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab for tab navigation.

As for a solution to snapping, instead of taking 5 pixels out of the vertical space, leave a few pixels on either side of the list of tabs so that it never completely fills up.
I'd even go so far to suggest a stipple texture which is pretty standard for grab handles :)

The link you are about to click on is now written on the right side of the status-bar, which is usually left unused.
Therefore, this functionality is still there.

And if you want to continue the car analogy, it's like removing the rear view mirror and replacing it with a small CCTV like done in many sports cars and trucks.

Oh but there are!!
I first didn't understand where it disappeared and then read the dev notes and it made a lot of sense.

With the links in the status bar, not a lot of functionality is lost. I'd even say I'd like the split to be user controllable (at least in about:config).

The only thing I miss is the little icons to enable/disable addons, but these can be placed on the top toolbars.

Regardless, Chrome *never* had a status-bar and iirc, it has a couple of users :)