Searching For Locations With Google Maps Api For Android

I am making an Android app that stores 3 million city markers in MongoDB. Depending on the current google map view, I make a geospatial box query to Mongo to get all markers within

Solution 1:

Is it possible to search the map with Google's map service?

No, it does not support searching.

Is it possible to only extract the search functionality from google maps without the excess places database?

Not from Google Maps, but look at the Geocoder class. You can pass a String location and get back a list of Address that match. You will have to go through the results yourself to pull out the lat/lng. Then you can move or animate the map as you please using animateCamera or moveCamera.