I think the redesign is absolutely terrible, and I'm not talking about visuals. The emphasis of the UI is on advertising / sponsorships, and not on content; for a content-focused company, this doesn't work. I can't help but think of a tirade that David Cross goes on about Arrested Development where he basically ridicules the network for shortening the length of the show, minutes at a time, in order to increase ad revenue at the expense of the show and its viewers. Techcrunch appears to be doing the same thing, albeit in a different medium.
Why are more and more sites getting facelifts that completely ruin user experience? What ever happened to good old fashioned design elements like contrast, spacial awareness, things like this?
On the whole I like the move to the cleaner and simpler layout but it still puzzles me that they almost completely neglect categories or tags.