On Google's search page there is a visible vertical scroll bar even when it is not necessary. This can be avoided by deleting the following style from body
selector
overflow-y: scroll;
When this is done, there is no vertical scroll bar on default and when the height of browser window is not enough to display entire content, vertical scroll bar appears. Since Google is known for their obsession with minimalism on their search page, why aren't they doing this?
I tested this behavior on Chromium 18 (ubuntu), Firefox 13 (ubuntu) and Internet Explorer 8 (winxp).