Earlier this week I wrote up a post at Download Squad about a new browser plugin called CloudMagic that can speed up your already pretty speedy email searches in Gmail:
CloudMagic is a Google Chrome and Firefox extension which indexes your email locally on your computer, and provides ridiculously fast results when you search. The extension provides a CloudMagic search field right in Gmail with a shortcut key of Ctrl-/ (rather than just / for Gmail’s regular search field). It features search-as-you-type that seems to react instantly to your keystrokes, and uses many of the same search operators that Gmail already uses, so you don’t need to re-learn how to search.
On a large email archive it can take a few days to complete indexing, but the search speed it offers will be worth it for some people.