Part of the reason Google redefined the search engine is because it was slick and easy to use. Now it's turning into a bloated piece of shit. Still has good results though.
It looks like they're trying to emulate Bing. Why on earth would they wanna do that?
However, I do know from experience that Google will revert to it's old page if you use an older browser like FF 2.0, Netscape, or god forbid, IE 6. Now I'm not suggesting to go after those browsers but you might want to install a user agent switcher addon in Firefox and set it to one of those identifiers.