> I suspect that Google has been trained by a bunch of people who just don't know how to search, and that's why natural language works and the + operator failed

> I suspect that Google has been trained by a bunch of people who just don't know how to search, and that's why natural language works and the + operator failed. Have a look at Reddit's "Tip of my tongue" subreddit for examples. I get where you are coming from, but I'm 99% sure it's not just this. I've searched for extremely vague things such as "that movie where there's one guy that shouts funny catchphrase all the time" and was amazed when the first result was the Wikipedia entry for the specific movie I was looking for, even though the Wikipedia entry didn't mention the specific trait being searched. Google really does do natural language processing on the queries.