I don't say this often but: Everything you just said is factually wrong.
- Windows had an indexer long before Vista (many many years)[0].
- Windows Search supports (and supported) UTF-8 and UTF-16 strings, as well as unicode if you had the correct language pack installed.
- Windows supported file content searches in Windows 95 (up through Vista).
- Microsoft could have allowed plugins to enrich search results WITHOUT gutting raw text searching (see Windows XP for a compromise, before they removed the work-around in Vista).
- Windows had an indexer long before Vista (many many years)[0].
- Windows Search supports (and supported) UTF-8 and UTF-16 strings, as well as unicode if you had the correct language pack installed.
- Windows supported file content searches in Windows 95 (up through Vista).
- Microsoft could have allowed plugins to enrich search results WITHOUT gutting raw text searching (see Windows XP for a compromise, before they removed the work-around in Vista).
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indexing_Service