I'm not sure how new this is, although it doesn't seem to be 100% rolled out at the moment so it may be fairly new. Right now I'm seeing a very sparse Google home page when I visit www.google.com, and the extra links (at top, to right of search box, below search box) appear only when I move my mouse.

See http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-10-08-n33.html