> numbers from Google's homepage are declining specifically because people are skipping that step. That's only if people know already which database to query.

> numbers from Google's homepage are declining specifically because people are skipping that step. That's only if people know already which database to query. Moreover, to some extent, Google's already trying to provide a direct answer to user queries (flights, directions, queries for which a Wikipeda / Wiktionary abstract is the best hit). Doing a "SELECT * FROM restaurants ORDER BY review DESC" is simple, discovering the database to execute that query against is still difficult. We'd need some sort of service discovery to automate that beyond making machines understand natural language.