Where is the AJAX in the Google Search API?

[#1]

The old Google SOAP interface accessed using XMLHttpRequest necessitated using a proxy service on the server that served up the page containing the request.
If I use the Google AJAX Search API instead (GSearch et al) which doesn't appear to need a proxy, this presumably replaces XMLHttpRequest by some Javascript generated on the fly or it would violate the browser 'same origin' (no cross-domain calls) policy.
But how then does the Search API then qualify as an AJAX API? How for example do the asynch communication and filling of the existing page (as opposed to loading a new page) work (IFrames?)

[#2]

Lets face it... the term AJAX has been horribly misused for most of last year....