Simplified search

I agree with you.  I talked w/ @aron a little about this too to understand his perspective.  You and I designed the existing approach w/ the goal of keeping the toolbar as clean and uncluttered as possible, with the realization that 1) it's not purely a search bar. 2) there would be more things that would probably need real estate here in the future. 3) this is a fairly standard model for search (small magnifying glass, expands when you click on it.)  I think those reasons probably still hold.