It works in the find box at the top right of every user-side page, and in record picker searches. I think this would be really useful for users in filters on search views. I think a lot of my users actually expect the filters to work this way. It might only make sense in filters on text fields. I imagine a user wanting to perform a search like this:
Name: John* OR Jane* Tags: employee AND central-office Notes: "Recently promoted"
I think it would really nice if there were some way to create "search" filters on views that allowed users to enter the great new text query language.