In context it's pretty obvious this is talking about omnibox suggestion rankings (which is also what changed and had the claimed "unwanted" impact), not search rankings.
Because I read more than random out of context tweets as my source of information.
> Is there another email that mentions Omnibox?
Yes. It's linked in multiple places in this very HN thread. Page 4 in the original justice.gov PDF specifically mentions the experiment that was done as a result of that originally quoted "complaint" email, and says "start experiments to improve search ranking in the omnibox".
Ok, and went and read some more and now I feel like the submission title was right all along. Jerry is asking for users to be given worse search results when they type into the omnibox - ie. give them a link to Google web search even if you found what they want locally. It’s only the assumption that “search results” means “web search results” that leads to any confusion. So the title could be improved by adding the word “omnibox” in there.