Great point. Yeah they got bad press, but are no longer hostage to Google Maps and have an acceptable maps product that gets improved as time goes by. If Tim Cook decides that $10billion in acquisition /hiring is needed for seearch, I'm sure he'll have it in a few hours from the board.

Apple might release the search engine to just a xx% at a time and rotate to see /get data to tweak it (if it's feasible) or make Apple Search default but give option to switch for a few years.

Search is like maps, a core product.