[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ferrousstate:
shouldn't be an issue

I have been having the same identical issue as you guys. I have found shockingly little in my searches, which I've been doing periodically for the last few months, really, since I've had the phone(12/5/13).

Now for the particulars :

I have a nexus 5. I'm running the stock ROM and kernel via OTA (4.4.2).

I am rooted (via wugfresh's toolkit) and I have the xposed framework installed along with only a couple of modules, (gravitybox, bootmanager).

Now all this means I am essentially bone stock which means since its a nexus 5 I have the GEL launcher by default and I love it and the setup in general, (my favorite setup so far of all my phones, nexi and other).

Now I've been fortunate and have never really needed to track down and eliminate software causing battery decimating "wakelocks" on any of my devices. And apparently the newer versions of KitKat make finding and solving wake lock issues difficult using apps developed for the purpose.

If I were to upload screenshots of my battery screen when the issue is presenting itself, Google search is up in the top five at least. And when I click it for details it shows similar readouts to what's been posted by OP in his screenshots.

I can't be the only one having serious issues with wakelocks cause by Google search on their nexus 5 and I'm baffled by the lack of discussion I've been able to find regarding this issue, (my google-fu is in my opinion at least up to par)

Whenever I notice my battery draining faster than normal without fail I go into my battery settings and discover that my phone is awake constantly regardless of screen-on time and the culprit is always exclusively Google search. Now its far from difficult to force stop the app and go about my business. And it usually doesn't cause me any issues for a time once that's been done. However, the unpredictability of the Google search app causing a crippling wake lock is for me the main issue as it means I cannot leave my phone unattended for more than a few hours without the possibility of coming back to my phone with my battery that's been molested. The battery in my opinion is more than acceptable and I quite like it. However the uncertainty is horrible.

I've read through the posts In this thread (regrettably few) and I have not been able to make a correlation between location services being on in any of the three modes and Google search wakelocking my ****. Also, I use Google Now all the time every day, and hotword detection is always on to call it up from the home screen by voice which i use even more so. So in my opinion while it is possible I'm sure that somewhere in all that there is a trigger for the issue, it is by no means predictable and in my experience never reproducible.

Now, for the "Google Search" app to cause a wake lock that will persist until the apps been manually force stopped, completely unpredictably represents a HUGE BUG that un-does all of the amazing work with our chipset and kernel and os that gives us such great battery life without having to sacrifice clock speed via custom min/max settings or governor controls.

I just don't get it. This is the first time I've ever encountered such a glaring problem/bug with so little complaint or even discussion.

I think we all should submit official bug- reports to Google about this issue and start being vocal in all of the android communities. I very very rarely comment or post as I am always able to make do by searching and reading diligently. But this blows my mind, the lack of posts and discussion would normally suggest this is a very limited problem affecting a very small minority. But I don't buy that. My set up is too stock, too close to the largest percentage of nexus 5 users to be so. Maybe people are just force stopping the app and forgetting about it, chalking it up to something they've personally done to their phone because "how could Google search be doing this to everyone else". I don't know. But this has to be more widespread of an issue than search results are indicating.

In summation: what OP said lol. But I don't think it has anything to do with what's been suggested by other posters on this thread. Their suggestions may work, and they may mitigate the issue. But if that is the case. Than this a very huge bug that threatens to undo all of the amazing work that's been done with aosp regarding battery efficiency and optimization.

- FerrousState

PS. Let's get some real discussion going in this community and all the others. Smarter people than us should be working on this - Top men guys, TOP MEN!