2. That sounds perfectly reasonable. Google doesn't want people to bundle other things for users who want to install just a different default search (and not "your hotbar" like the Netscape days).
3. I'm not sure what you're talking about, is Chrome on Linux default search configured differently than Chrome on Windows?
True. But guess who’s paying Apple good money in order to remain the default search engine. Who knows what else might be part of this deal?
Oh, and when they agreed to suppress wages through an anti-poaching agreement, was that explicit in the contract?
I suspect it's the other way around. They don't want random extensions to mess with your search engine because they get kickbacks from yahoo or whatever. Though if the extension is named for a search engine I don't think it should apply.