I know this is a sarcastic take on HN's overall conservation, but you must admit Ajax has its place, and it's not necessarily on a search engine result page.
Besides, it ruins much of my browser behavior, shortcuts for example don't work at all, such as backspace. A barebones page would have been a better fit in the target environment (the web).
Google seems to be the biggest culprit in breaking keyboard shortcuts: backspace, keyboards, etc. Surprises me, because surely many of their employees are 'power users' - doesn't it infuriate them, too? I wonder if Chrome has a 'don't hijack keyboard' extension ...