Hey --

Sorry to butt in after all of this has been resolved for you, but I'd just like to weigh in and confirm some things for anyone else who happens across this particular bit of nastiness.

The issue in question does a few things. On the Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and perhaps other search engines, it will disable on-hover display of full links in the status bar of your browser.
More alarmingly, it will redirect any affected search query result you click to a "go.google.com", "go.msn.com", or "go.yahoo.com" link, which opens a random ad in a new window.
You can still copy/paste plaintext links into your address bar, or type them in directly. Thus, Google is still usable, just in an extremely cumbersome manner.
It also appears to block or cripple the loading of other websites in general.
It does not appear to be CPU intensive.

Per my searches here and elsewhere, MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware appears to be the most reliable means of cleaning this out. Just make sure that you update it first, and run a FULL scan.
This can take up to a few hours, depending on your hardware configuration and harddrive space consumption, but it's usually well worth the wait.
Once the scan is complete, view the results and make sure that the infected entries are all selected/checked, and Remove Selected.
This will likely prompt a system restart. Follow the prompt, and run another scan.

Hopefully that will be the end of it.
I can't guarantee results -- only offer this bit of anecdotal advice.
This is what worked for me and several others.
With any luck, it may apply in the similar cases that seem to be cropping up recently.