I find this interesting as well as unimportant at the same time. Interesting because it shows that Google has responded to increasing connection speeds by adding bells and whistles to their homepage. That's really great.

Unimportant because with Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc. - going to the google homepage is almost entirely optional. Google is working so hard into baking themselves into almost any facet of web functionality that their homepage is becoming less and less important over time.

The only reason I check the google homepage is to look at the doodles.