Matt, your reasoning reflects my own experiences as a new MC user. First time out, I was befuddled by the overlapping nature of global vs media views. I think that segregating media types is clearer for new users.
Alex B's reasoning, however, reflects my curent experiences (advanced novice, I guess). I really appreciate the power of the global view when using MC for searches. As an example, I downloaded a real audio (.ram) web radio link and then couldn't find it. Turns out that MC automatically categorized .ram files as video, even though this was audio. I only found it by going into "recently imported", which uses a global view.
So I think that search tools need to have access to all media, at least as a dreaded option.
As an alternative, make each window view completely independent. If I have 2 split views, one can be audio and the other, say, documents. Search would be done only on the "active" window. If I search the top view, the other is unaffected. This seems important from a usability standpoint. For me, having all windows captive to all searches was much more confusing than the global thing. Similarly, if I have 3 views and the bottom one is playing now, it always stays like that until I actively change it. Much less disorienting.
I think what you guys are doing on 11.1 is revolutionary stuff. Kind of sneaking it all in there, I guess. So maybe it's time to think about nailing down the views.