Excellent post.
With Google opening up these new fronts in their war with Apple, Apple needs to open one in search. I have always said Apple shouldn't get into search but Google's moves have changed my mind. making Google defend their search business can only help Apple in the other areas.
I think it would be a waste of time for Apple to develop a search engine if their only goal would be to deliver a blow to Google. Google gets a substantial amount of revenue from being the default search on many Apple products. A simple deal with Bing or Yahoo to replace Google would deliver the same effect with considerably less effort on Apple's part.
With growing reports of Google's info gathering and privacy lapses in the last year, I've been migrating off their services. I hadn't used Yahoo in years but was pleasantly surprised at how much it has improved. It's now my default for general web searches and I haven't regretted a single moment of it. Meanwhile, Bing's map and image searches put Google's to shame (though their web search still blows for whatever reason.) Now I just need to find something to get me off the gmail habit and something to replace news.google.com and I will have minimized my Google usage to a more comfortable level.