Android phones, apps and tablets

Have you found a clever way of killing it? I had it removed from my Galaxy Nexus but it just left empty space at the top of the screen where the search bar was - you have to root/custom rom it to actually use that part of the screen. It'd be nice if there was a way around that.

Not a clever way of killing it, but the following is true for me:
1) Google Now is disabled
2) Google Plus is disabled
3) I never use search, I use DDG in Dolphin (oh, and the zoom bug is fixed)
4) I use a custom hosts file to block privacy invasive processes from doing anything

As such, the Google Search process starts and goes into cached mode but never actually does anything except the integration with the launcher (it seems to have deep tentacles there).

Oh, and I also have location disabled (so it bugs me a little that the service for that is still running) and WiFi disabled.

And I run OpenVPN 24/7.

Crazily, the phone is super useful for how I use it, and I get about 2.5 days battery life out of it.