What does icon with magnifying glass on folder do?

My users have asked: “There’s a little icon with a magnifying glass at the top of each list of folders, but it doesn’t do anything in Chrome—does it in any other browser?”

Though this looks like the icon of a Search function (which would be useful) selecting it does not seem to do anything in any browser.

If this is not designed to open a search function, an icon without a magnifying glass would be less misleading.