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I haven't used GMail in years, but if it's the same search that runs google.com I'm not surprised it doesn't find anything. I've already talked at length on how Google Search has gotten progressively bad over the past 5 if not 10 years, and I still don't understand how they're failing at their core technology.

I use Fastmail and I'm generally pleased with their search as well. It hasn't failed me yet.

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Is their core technology ads or search?

It's actually an interesting discussion. After thinking about it for a bit, it seems like Google is a search company fronting for it's own ad business. In the early days their core technology probably was search but at this point it's likely adtech. At this point it doesn't matter if their search is bad (it's probably better if it is bad, as more time is spent seeing ads) as long as they are the dominant/default search engine for the general public.

There are a lot of opportunities for a better search engines but very little incentive invest into making it so.

Both. They offer us search and we offer them ads. They have to both at a high enough technical level in order to succeed.

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