The Directory is still there on the speculated new home page at Google. Just click <More> - the Dierctory and a whole lot of other things are linked from the <more> page.

I have only seen the new home page once, that disappeared when I refreshed. It appears Google are letting it out from time to time for short times for some users.

Google updated from DMOZ/ODP 8 times in 2002 and 2 times in 2003. There was heaps of speculation last year that the were going to drop the directory because they had not updated .... then they updated in November.

CBP