See Search is too Specific (click on link) If the search length was increased, then it would result in more gnutella net traffic thus slowing it down, searches would time out with less results, searches would take longer but come back with probably less results, etc.

Alan18's suggestion is actually a popular idea. Suggested many times. Pity it hasn't arrived sooner.

Mune's idea sounds very interesting. From an initial on-face perspective it sounds like a great idea. I don't know how easy it would be to implement technically. I'd give that one a thumbs up IMHO.