Problem: An advanced user may be able to figure out this is the search going on - and now results are coming back from the dispatched search action (but a few minutes delayed  for some reason)

Perhaps it will be important in terms of system Integrated agents like Bing - to increase awareness to the "call" being placed to remote agents. I.e. how seamless can it be? At least when latency is around ... a toast notification should be posted. That the point of this writing here (increase awarness of collaborating with an online agent).

Use case example:

Try Win+Q > Search > Everywhere ... for i.e. Marilyn Monroe, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc. Do a few.

In my case ... nothing happens any where near instantly or soon right now. 5 minutes or so.

Then a message prompts: "Something went wrong with your search, and it's taking too long to complete your search. Try searching again.". So probably a bug or whatever ... to be fixed.

However ...

Problem: Disappearing/appearing search ... No notification on search progress or indication of search activity (a toast notification? i.e. in case the search result is like a few minutes delayed as in this case) ...

Use case - although probably a temp bug with the Bing service on the preview?

When you search for something everywhere ... i.e. the phrase arnold schwarzenegger, the charms bar and search may disappear and nothing seems to go on. You call the charms bar again ... and this time you type another phrase. I.e. marilyn monroe ... or may be just retries (posting and dispatching five exact searches ... i.e. retries).

Nothing happens.

Later, like 5 minutes after, suddenly a fullscreen appears with 'Results for "anorld schwarzenegger"' ... "Something went wrong with your search, and it's taking too long to complete your search. Try searching again." 10 (+5) minutes later the result of the 2nd search (and so on) appears: 'Results for "marilyn monroe"' ... "Something went wrong with your search, and it's taking too long to complete your search. Try searching again."                     

Problem: An advanced user may be able to figure out this is the search going on - and now results are coming back from the dispatched search action (delayed for some reason). Try imagine a user dispatching thus ordering the search like 20 times to get something? Then calling support. Sudden 20 full screens will keep appearing every 5 min or so with search results interrupting the user in business phone calls?

1)

Just tested this again after Win 8.1. update http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2863204

Update improves Search charm performance in Windows 8.1 Preview

Now the search does not fail with  "Something went wrong with your search, and it's taking too long to complete your search. Try searching again.".

2)

But when you press the Search button the system does still "not respond". It takes 5 minutes to retrieve the search results i.e. the Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So you would perceive the Win 8.1. search everywhere as non-interactive - i.e. does not respond? That's the consumer experience right now - even in these exceptional cases that may happen from time to time ... i.e. with reliability of the search service.

In case the search results are (much) delayed ... i.e. not (almost) instant ... the search in progress should post a toast notification to the user, i.e. respond. I.e. be interactive ... talk to the user. It's an agent ... with a responsibility. If something is wrong, it should post the delay ... instead of behaving as if it does not work (as if it is not processing, when it is in fact processing ...).