> it's because you are the use case that is unfeasible.
Not at all, as evidenced by other search engines that are successful at this and the fact that Google used to be successful at this.
> It's a SEARCH engine
Precisely. I want it to search the web and return a list of sites that match my search criteria. I don't want it to to answer a specific question for me, nor to try to guess what I "really" want. That should be done by a different tool.
> We're expecting too much from a single textbox.
I'm not sure what you think that I'm expecting, but what I'm expecting is much simpler than what Google seems to be trying to do.
I suspect that I've failed to adequately explain my use case and we're talking about different things, but I'm not sure where I went wrong so don't know how to clarify.
You are arguing that google is a tool. The other person is arguing that google is more like an opinionated contractor.
"You don't want a tool, you want to remodel your bathroom" is what the other person is arguing. That's kind of true.
We're arguing that we don't want someone tell us how to remodel our bathroom, we just want a tool we can use to remodel our bathroom ourselves.
Google said that providing a tool doesn't make enough money, so they transitioned into being a contractor.
The crux of the issue is the "-" operator. As a tool, it removed any search result with the word after the "-" operator on the page in a very specific way. If you weren't getting the results you wanted, it's because you didn't think of how to use the tool in the right way. As a contractor, they try to interpret what you want to subtract and then give you what they think you want.
The person you are responding to might be too young to remember that google was actually a very good tool at one point.
Not at all, as evidenced by other search engines that are successful at this and the fact that Google used to be successful at this.
> It's a SEARCH engine
Precisely. I want it to search the web and return a list of sites that match my search criteria. I don't want it to to answer a specific question for me, nor to try to guess what I "really" want. That should be done by a different tool.
> We're expecting too much from a single textbox.
I'm not sure what you think that I'm expecting, but what I'm expecting is much simpler than what Google seems to be trying to do.
I suspect that I've failed to adequately explain my use case and we're talking about different things, but I'm not sure where I went wrong so don't know how to clarify.