It changes my perception of the browser state, learned through years of familiarization. That I could get used to. But its a bad idea on so many other levels. Its an order of magnitude harder to compress, bogging down remote-terminal operation. It scrambles the desktop metaphor - I have multiple monitors, the browser is just one tool that is open, and now this circus-themed "background" stands out like a beacon but with no functional value whatsoever. It obscures controls (as widely discussed elsewhere) which is plain bad app design. It increases (marginally) load time. It "fades in" creating a distraction for the power user - my desktop doesn't dance around otherwise unless something significant is happening. Honestly, I have to wonder if you aren't emotionally defending Google, because these are mostly obvious reasons to detest this "feature".