These articles are muddying the definition of a search engine. I guess in someways these articles and the general public perception is telling us a pure search

These articles are muddying the definition of a search engine. I guess in someways these articles and the general public perception is telling us a pure search engine no longer cuts it for us. However the point is, search engines were meant to scour the web for data and present them in the order the algorithm deems most relevant. That is it. Google built a vertical integration into it for specific types of data that could be turned into a single answer like bus routers, NBA scores, temperature, wiki info etc. This is not the norm. It can only be done for some data types. "Boutique" search engine by definition is doing logic analysis based on context, and so that will bring in "someone's" point of view into it. Immediately becomes useless for objective research/analysis. This is supposed to be done by the user. IF "boutique" is needed we already have it in reddit and this forum, media outlets like tv and print. The specific question asked in the article "What do NFT collectors think about NFTs?" is a terrible one because a search engine cannot achieve that objectively. Someone needs to conduct a poll and that too its subjective because NFT collectors for different verticals/price points might have different opinions. NFT naysayers and NFT platform owners will have different motivations too. So I don't know if we should trust a boutique search engine to tell us a one line answer.