What's interesting is that after reading this article I've realized I always expected e-mail search to be bad. Why? Possibly because, when another entity holds a large portion of my social information, it feigning ignorance about deep technical knowledge of my personal life (which is likely better than my own understanding) makes me feel good.

It's less 'big brother'y, which may explain why poor e-mail search doesn't bother me. It's as though its waiting for me to get the answer first.