For those of you who, like me, are very annoyed by Google’s decision to force a large background image onto their search page, I offer a workaround. For your convenience (and mine) I’ve created a tiny (203 byte) white image, which conforms to Google’s specifications. You can grab it here:
http://benjiflaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/white.png
Save it to your computer, upload it to Google, and search page loading times are more-or-less back to normal. Enjoy!