Yes, and ultimately a search engine has to be a research tool, to find the best links. If there's a simple answer, it should be right there. That's what snippet

Yes, and ultimately a search engine has to be a research tool, to find the best links. If there's a simple answer, it should be right there. That's what snippets were about, though they need development. Once the search prompts becomes the end point for answers, and they never follow reference links, we're on to something else, something completely different. What happens to the web when that happens? Not many people are talking about that. Some day I'll happily walk away from Google, but I respect that their model, through schema.org and being based on the open web, creates generally useful metadata. Sure, it's open to being gamed, which has had drastic negative effects, but that's not completely their fault, there's no easy answer to any of this.