These days I have to wait longer simply because of Google's "auto-search" functionality and their heavy use of JS. It's like it's trying to guess what I want to see before I'm even done inputing a search query-- which I'm sure is very convenient for novices, not so much if you're a power user and looking for something specific. Other search engines (Bing, DDG) don't have this problem, of course.

I think Google have just stopped even trying to maintain their "flagship" Search service - that the only way I could explain how their search quality and website responsiveness could decline to the level of the old Yahoo.com and Altavista. And don't get me started about the sorry state of their Google Groups archive...

You're right, in theory, but that's not how things work in reality at scale. Remember that every search query propagates through at least a thousand machines.