In response to blip #119057
@somethingedgey: It was changed to be that way fairly recently. It's to reduce the load on the server.
Before the change the server had to return so many results to so many users at once all the time that it was pretty much going to end up too much to handle as the site got more and more users.
The thinking basically is that if 750 pages aren't enough to find what someone looking for then they need to be more specific with their searches. :)