In particular, we are starting to use applications like SkyDNS, Consul, and Kubernetes, all of which rely on local name resolution in some way using search paths. Many users of the Alpine Linux container image have also expressed their desire for this feature at
https://github.com/gliderlabs/docker-alpine/issues/8.
On the functional differences between glibc page, the domain and search keyword "Support may be added in the future if there is demand". So please consider this request an addition to whatever demand for the feature already exists.