What is the point of all these proxy search engines if they rely on the centralized servers’ indexes anyways?

Correction: it’s not even the indexes it’s the results. So really you still have no control over things such as the pageranking.

On Android you have to explicitly allow installs from unknown sources and it warns you that it could make it possible to install malware. This has always been enough of a deterrent on Android and I don’t understand why the same can’t be true for iOS.