Just played with Photon on their website: It's better but still far away from Google's capability. Like it or not, but Google is very, very good with search :-)
Besides Photon there is Mapzen search that provides search as you type.
Naturally comparing with google is a bit apples and oranges, on the one hand a company that purchases essentially all its data and spends billions on its mapping department, compared to the OSMF with a annual budget of roughly $150k. So it is not a surprise that some things take a bit longer with OSM, but it is tortoise vs. hare....
Just played with Photon on their website: It's better but still far away from Google's capability. Like it or not, but Google is very, very good with search :-)