Or maybe because it's impossible to guarantee that you'll find what you're looking for and you may not even be looking for anything specific, making "search" a

Or maybe because it's impossible to guarantee that you'll find what you're looking for and you may not even be looking for anything specific, making "search" a more honest and literal term? I'm not saying Google results haven't been getting worse, but blaming that on Google entirely instead of rampant SEO (which is mostly used by people who want to make money, not people who want to provide useful information) and the lack of hand curated directories to steal relevant results from are likely just as detrimental to good search results as Google's ad prioritization. While Google certainly hasn't been helping, the web has been falling apart (in terms of usability at least) for at least a decade. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetency.