Google now has a DeskBar that you can use to activate Google from your keyboard. Here's how it works. After installation, you have to right click on the start bar, cruise up the context menu to Toolbars, and then turn on the "Google DeskBar".

This will activate a toolbar that you can leave in your start menu, or if your toolbars aren't locked, you can actually drag off of your start bar, and dock it to any side window.

The default keyboard shortcut is CTRL+SHIFT+G which puts your cursor in the Google space. Type your search and press enter. Personally I turned off the little preview screen that it comes with, and just have it launch a new IE session, but there are many ways to configure it.