Search could still be orders of magnitude better, and google seems worse and worse lately.
Console yourself with the thought that if PowerSet fixes this problem, you'll see a lot of haters become fanboys. Bear in mind, though, that the pre-bluster has historically been correlated with failure, not success, so people are skeptical. I've read about techniques that will cure cancer so many times.
You can't compare yourself to Google for years without releasing something that actually compares to Google and then expect people to refrain from pointing it out.
I can deal with the company I work for being slammed on techcrunch, because that's what techcrunch is for. But to see the people on news.ycomb start jumping on that bandwagon makes me sad. This is supposed to be the place where startups are explored and taken seriously.
Powerset is not a micro-social site with some added value like some of my previous projects. Making a new search engine is a massive undertaking. It took google several years, but no one seems to want to give any challengers a real chance.