Interesting, is this intentional? I know since they switched over to the new interface (with the various search options along the top of the window) they've been trying to get people to embrace the new layout. Maybe they're trying to force users to press "Search" instead of "Google"?
Consider turning on keyboard shortcuts in Gmail. (The default for Go to Inbox is <g> then <i>.) Once you know them, you'll rarely need to click anything.
Actually, it's not draggable either, so it's now (at least) a CSS background image, on a <span>. I'm not sure if it was an <img> inside <a> up until today or not, but in that case, I suppose you could say that CSS was involved.
