I agree. Websites that do this are awful, Google Plus is guilty of this.

Re combo-boxing the language list: Wikipedia is the most successful multi-language website by far. Highlighting this to new and old users is a great thing. Its not like the search box takes up any more than one line anyway.

For Wikipedia, this redesign blows. I do like the visual style though. This is really just showcasing the webdesign company's talent, right?

Wikipedia is probably the worst site for this redesign, which is probably why it's so eye catching - we're seeing all of these elements in a shape that's terrible for wiki but great for some other site. Since it's such a terrible fit for wiki, we can clearly see and identify elements we'd glaze over if we liked the changes.

That's just the sort of element change that looks distinctive, and makes a redesign appear appealing, but almost certainly tests horribly under actual use.

As another response notes, G+ is absolutely horrible at its content-to-navigation space allocation. The more so as most of the navigation elements are styled as "fixed", and won't move.

I pretty much always view the site with an editor open to pick off the most annoying of these features. I'm working on a Stylish script.

This all the way. If you are trying to design a web page with usability in mind, the most important thing to do is make sure on the default 16:9 or 16:10 screen everyone is using that the content dominates the page with the least navigation overhead as possible. That is the main reason why I prefer sites that use vertical sidebars to horziontal top of the page navigation frames that take up 1/3 the initial load.