All this search stuff is another bullet fired at Google.
It is all very simple. Everything useful gets built into the OS. If you don't control the OS you are at the mercy of the person who does control the OS.
I think it is a big mistake to dump everything into OS. Just look at the iOS and Android. I Android most features can be updated as apps while Apple has to constantly update iOS in order to fix/improve the functionality of features that generally have nothing to do with OS.
I sometimes check out Twitter links in the morning and instead of saving to instapaper or wanting to open in safari to get the link, i can just leave it and get it at work.