They've special-cased a few instances of punctuation. C# and C++ work as search terms, for example. & also works, possibly because it frequently shows up in searches with high advertisement value such as "Barnes & Noble".

But yes, I'd kill for a search engine that could consistently search for punctuation. I was recently trying to learn the difference between the <%= and <%# pseudotags in ASP.NET and completely struck out on Google.

Yes, 2001 Google did. I don't know their reasons for removing the ability to search strings that include punctuation, but it could have to do with bots using search engines to scan for security exploits, as with the Bing overreaction to phpbb queries (http://blamcast.net/articles/bing-crash).