Oh, I see ya. I hadn't seen it, but it is a little annoying. I guess I usually don't pull anything up quickly enough for it to be a bother, but it is strange.
Since you brought this up, I think I had a computer virus mimicking "the fade", it messed up, or my computer is a dog. The choices never faded in. I exited and did a shut down. It has been fine ever since.
The major reason I notice "the fade" was because that happened.
I have it set to go to my iGoogle page and that doesn't "fade" so I didn' teven know about it until this posting. I went to the "classic" view and saw the fade but it doesn't bother me a bit.
Interesting ... never noticed. When I first went to check it out I didn't see anything but then when I moved the mouse it faded in. Very fast but noticable ... doesn't bother me! If you don't move your mouse after typing google.com in your address bar you won't see anything but the Google logo and search spot.