Going by my recent experience with mainstream search engines (read: I don't find shit anymore), I think the history of online search isn't closed yet. So far I've come to the conclusion that the problem isn't one of neglect by the likes of Google Search, DuckDuckGo, StartPage, etc. Rather, search engines do their job just fine, there just seems to be no good new content out there to search, and that has everything to do with the incentives that Google Search sets (and perhaps slow retirement and/or disillusionment of the web enthusiast generation). It'll be interesting to watch GOOG being torn between squeezing the last femto-penny out of each and every visitor contact on the web and elsewhere for growth, and at the same time seeing their cash cow fade as content creators can't make a living on DoubleClick and YouTube pittances.
I first came across Bourne because of his book "Methods of Information Handling". Its masterful summary of the available methods well deserved the American Documentation Institute Book-of-the-Year award.
