The xxx* wildcard asterisk search option

Why does Google does not support this feature?

[vitaplease]

Good old Microsoft's search function "spoiled" us with a slow but useful wildcard asterisk (*) option.

Certainly for searches in German or Dutch this search function comes in very handy. The German language tends to stick words together.

The English search for "search engine specialist"
would be "Suchmaschinenspezialist" and there are worse, even longer examples.

Being able to use the asterisk after of before parts of the words helps in finding variations of results on either or both of e.g. "Suchmachinen" or "Spezialist".

With Monika Henzinger as Director of Research Google being German, I wonder why this has not been prioritised? :)

Same goes for searches of part numbers. Is it part number NA10265.32 or NA 10265.32 or is the actual part number of the product I am looking for longer?

I was wondering why Google does not support this funtion. Does this take too much resources? Too much processing time?

BTW. Good old grandmother of search Altavista does support this search function..

[ciml]

I used to use wildcard stemming a lot in the AltaVista days.

I guess it's slow and expensive; maybe it'll be one of the features in the subscription service [webmasterworld.com];).

[vitaplease]

Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Google's mission statement [google.com]. (from Google's great people needed page)

"*" a Mission impossible?

I guess it never hurts to highlight bits of where the best search engine falls short of their realised ambition.;)