I think google is actually a web directory or portal masquerading as a search. At least that's how I use it, and I suspect most people do. I generally know the

I think google is actually a web directory or portal masquerading as a search. At least that's how I use it, and I suspect most people do. I generally know the internet sites where I want to get information, and I'm definitely not using google to discover then. Google lets me deep dive to a site and content, saving a step vs going to the site, and probably searching better than a site's native search. Stack Overflow is the archetypal example of this. And Google's pretty good for it, once you learn to dodge some ads and spam. At the same time, the internet is mature, so most people are doing less site discovery and going back to a set of regulars, so the deep link portal model serves people well Otoh what Google's terrible at is finding new sites with interesting content. If you don't already know where your going, you mostly end up in spam land. I'd like to see a search that addresses that.