Good points. But a large part of the problem is that Google can't be bothered to follow their own rules: Again and again I catch them ignoring my doublequotes

Good points. But a large part of the problem is that Google can't be bothered to follow their own rules: Again and again I catch them ignoring my doublequotes and verbatim options. There aren't any conflicting incentives around that, are there? Either you respect user queries or you don't. Also, look at it another way: Kagi manages to do this while building on Google! It is in another league, just like Google used to be. Even nano scale Marginalia (1 guy, 1 tower pc, 4 drives) manages to respect my queries.