Very true, glad I'm not the only one to have noticed this. And I've got a suggestion for a search engine so intelligent - well relatively - it took google back to school and enrolled it in kindergarten. I find myself using it whenever Google gets stumped; it consistently gives better results in the sense that I feel it has a better understanding of my query. Take this example that prompted my above semi-hyperbole. Background:
Four days ago, while walking around outside I saw an insect. Normally this is nothing to write home about except that I had originally mistaken this insect for an assorted clump of debris. So you can imagine my surprise when not only did it start moving, it did so with gusto, scaling walls and what not. Strangest thing I've ever seen. So I thought I'd check Google to find out what manner of sorcery this was. I expected nothing of course - I had no clue where to start. Search term: "insect with a bunch of junk attached to it".
Google Result: http://i.imgur.com/FGIInog.png?1 vs. Other Search Engine Result: http://i.imgur.com/t8ei8dX.png?1
What I sought was the debris carrying lacewing larvae. Result 2 is far off but I was so happy to put a name to the entity I did not even register that result.
The first thing you will notice is Google trying way too hard and ending up with idiotic suggestions as a result. It seems to use the words and their synonyms without accounting for context. That is the only way it could possibly give PHP, email and bugzilla reports as possible answers to that query [1]. It's a common recent pattern I've been noticing, unless I can model how I think people will write about what I'm searching for and more importantly it is not something the SEO people have motive to polish so vigorously, the content is accidently removed; I won't get good results. That SEO bit is annoying because I remember when my previous searches in the genre (e.g. game related) used to be far more fruitful. The new behavior of adding synonyms is particularly not worth it since the fails are much more spectacular than it wins.
Final stuff: I also compare bing, duck duck go and blekko results whenever I hit queries I think are complicated, none do much better than google. Sometimes they are worse. This result is the first time Samuru blew everyone out of the water, usually it is modestly better [2] (answer in second half vs not so for others [3]). The reason I still use google is force of habit, it took over chrome and most importantly: its incredible and unmatched indexing ability. But I use samuru enough that it's one of my most visited pages.
I have absolutely no affiliation with them, don't know who it's by and found out about it here on HN. According to Paul Graham, Google can be tackled if they can get 10,000 hackers on their side. Time to put the hypothesis to the test, +1 here.
[1] Here is the same search with quotes: http://imgur.com/qiGDnqr&t8ei8dX#0
[3] I only sometimes check page 2 for the others. This might seem unfair but a key UX concept is to minimize latency. Clicking to page 2 seems minor but the EV for that action is so low I skip it. But scrolling just a bit more since I'm already here is much cheaper. UX should absolutely count as much as tech (UX/process + human + algorithms > all).
[2] My annoyance with such vague anecdotes is why I decided to start taking screenshots. And also because results are not stable. For example, search terms that bing once did well on are now embarrassing.
