Heck, that goes for most of Google. Look at this beauty: https://www.google.com/?noj=1&gws_rd=ssl Why is this not still the default google.com?
By the way, why on earth would anyone want an app to do a google search? When searching for a webpage, the best 'app' is going to be the one that shows webpages, named 'the browser'. It's like going to weightwatchers.com and seeing a banner ad that tells you "it's better with mcdonalds". It is laughably grotesque. What happened to google that they've strayed so far from sanity?
Because it provides a neat search widget, plus Google Now.
There is a "basic" version (which they also advise against) which is significantly better, but still slow and bloated. Yahoo used to be my go-to account back from around 1997, but after the successive iterations of bloat, it's now in a point where I only use it for unimportant website registrations (i.e. spam fodder).