Google policies regarding direct linking?

Does anybody know a definitive source (preferably Google itself) that states whether or not it's ok to simply link to a Google results page using the following format?

http://www.google.com/search?q=QUERY

Google lets you set up these Customized Search Engines, but the results seem kind of stripped down. We want to let our users click on these links to quickly find local businesses using Google's listings and Google Maps, so if you search for:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Uno%27s+loc%3A+Cambridge+Massachusetts

You will actually get the map and address as the first result, which isn't available with their CSE's even if you tell it to search the whole web, which is fairly incomprehensible to me.

It seems like it would be unreasonable to disallow direct linking, but I've been surprised before.

You can generate a SOAP request to Google which is probably the preferred way. See this link for more details.

Google is not going to argue with anything that sends them traffic, that's just bad bussniess sense.

As JazzaJay states, google does not care how you go about linking to them. They are like everyone else out on the web 'fighting for links to increase there popularity and increase there potential for revenue'.

So you can like to who ever you like how you like (just make sure the site is not to do with fraud etc or it will damage your own page ranking).