"Windows search sucks," "Search on Windows is so bad, it searches Bing on my local storage," "How difficult is it for Microsoft to solve the search problem after all these years," and the list goes on. There's no denying that Windows search is unreliable, and the integration with Bing makes it even worse.
Microsoft appears to be trying out a new feature that splits Windows Search into two: local search and "web search from Microsoft Bing." It seems that by default you can only search local storage. If you want to search web results, you can click the "WebSearch from Microsoft Bing" tab.
If you switch to the Bing web search option, the search bar will be updated to display "MicrosoftBingWebSearch:" where you can enter your query keywords. This is a pretty nice change, and a better experience than the existing experience of having all the results squeezed into one window (local + Bing).
Now, if you wish, you can continue to enable the web search option and still search for files locally, and then click "Web search from Microsoft Bing" to return to web search. The problem is, the feature is still hidden, and Microsoft is testing it in three Windows Insider channels: Release Preview (Windows 1124H2), Beta (Windows 1123H2), and Windows Canary channel.
The biggest problem is that the ability to split Windows Search is limited to the European Union. This means that if your region is set to the United States, United Kingdom, or other regions, you will only be able to use Windows Search with Bing.
Therefore, if you are in a country where anti-privacy and anti-competitive behavior is not legally binding, it is unlikely that Microsoft will provide you with these Windows Search upgrades.
In addition to this interesting update, Windows Search is getting another big change in the future, using AI to display content when you use words to describe it. The new search will use semantic indexing, which understands and remembers content better than traditional search indexes.
Currently, you need to type in the filename of an image, but AI-driven search means documents or images can be searched using words that may not be in the filename or photo.
Unfortunately, the AI-based Windows search functionality will be limited to Copilot+ PCs equipped with 45TOPs NPU.