Why does Google use inline CSS

[flyerguy]

I know they probably aren't so concerned about their Pagerank, but why do they have a chunk of inline CSS on their basic search page?

Googling this topic highlights some hacky reasons why companies might do it, but G is after all concerned with accessibility and pageload time.. seems to me like they could get around the browser sniffing issues and deliver the CSS externally.

[londrum]

it probably displays quicker when it's included in the page like that, rather than making a round trip to the server to download a stylesheet that's only a few lines long.

[soumadri]

But according to my experience, its always good to write xternal CSS rather than inline, unless its too small to be considered for performance.

[vincevincevince]

The length of the CSS is shorter than the total request headers you'd need to get it externally...