This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

This is going to sound like a stand-up comedy bit, but I was on my way to the airport recently

and I needed the confirmation email for my flight so I could get my

boarding pass. So I pulled up my phone and I typed in some keywords into the search bar of the

mail program. I started with the airline I thought I was taking but that search pulled up mailing list promotions and old flights,

and I know if I searched long enough and hard enough I could eventually find it.

But the thing is, by now I'm at the airport and I just have this naive conviction that

searching should be better and easier. But I often come up empty. There are days when I feel like I've control-eft up my life into oblivion and I'll never

easily find the email I need, much less old photos and documents on my hard drive.

The good news is I'm not alone. Adam Rogers feels this particular pain too.

You know, you think emails a problem. Try to find a slack you once wrote.

You know, try to find a tweet.

Try to search for a photo on Flickr or Instagram.

Pinterest.

Like I dare you.

Adams a senior tech correspondent at Insider.

He's been thinking and writing about what's known in the industry as search.

For the last decade, people have been grumbling about not being able to find things online, both in our private data

and on the public web.

I would say to people, I think search sucks, and other people would say, oh my God, it really does.

For Adam, the stakes for this go beyond me not be able to find that one email.

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