I've tried creating a Custom Search in the ToolStrip using my Adsense account.

in generalsearch.html I put

Code:

<form action="http://www.ranch-home.com/mw_inc/mw_results.htm" id="cse-search-box">
  <div>
    <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="partner-pub-6893221654535056:spsej0-m19x" />
    <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:10" />
    <input type="hidden" name="ie" value="ISO-8859-1" />
    <input type="text" name="q" size="31" />
    <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" />
  </div>
</form>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/cse/brand?form=cse-search-box&amp;lang=en"></script>

And Then in loaded that as an extension.
A search box comes up find but no page has loaded.
Still working on this with everyone's excellent code examples.

But anyone have better ideas?

You have to use the Chrome Tab api to make this...
Add the permission "tabs" first. (in the manifest file)

After that, you can open a page using this Javascript function p.E.:

Code:

function openInTab(pageUrl)
{
	chrome.windows.getCurrent(function(win){
		chrome.tabs.getSelected(win.id, function(tab){
			chrome.tabs.update(tab.id,{url:pageUrl,selected:true},function(){});
		});
	});
}