Anecdote: In the early days of www search engines, before Google, I recall this total number of documents searched being much more important to www users. I be

Anecdote: In the early days of www search engines, before Google, I recall this total number of documents searched being much more important to www users. I believe when Google began vying with AltaVista as the most popular search engine, that total was an important signal. Users wanted to feel they were tapping the largest database of www pages. With AltaVista, a user could page through 100's of pages of results. There was no temporary IP ban triggered as there is today if one tries this with Google. It's unfortunate that many www users of today never experienced the old AltaVista and being able to dig deep into pages of results without triggering IP bans. They thus are unaware of alternatives to the way Google has set up their search engine. The question I have is: Do you think Google's approach of restricting users to only the top, "most popular" results is more beneficial to users or to Google? Why is Google limiting the user's search in this way?