I agree the parent is overthinking it, but that's underthinking it. It's been a long time since search engines were mere text matchers.

I’m uncomfortable with your use of “mere.” It might connote that what Google Search does now is an improvement.

And that's exactly what I mean to connote, text matches make for appalling search.

I have the same reservations about Google as anyone, but rewriting history is never the right move. Moving beyond text matching was what made search truly useful.

    > Moving beyond text matching was 
    > what made search truly useful. 

PageRank is what made Google more useful than its competition. They had it since the beginning, and I like it.

What I don't like is to search for the band "Chrisma" and get results for "fruitcake sale!" because Google corrected my spelling to "Christmas", decided to look for related concepts, and then boost whichever result is the most mercantile.

> They had it since the beginning

Yes, they have. Read what I said again, I don't dispute this. What Google does now is an improvement over text matchers. I never claimed that what they do now is better than Google circa 2000 (though I don't care to register an opinion either way on that).

Whatever they've done since, their product remains better than text matchers. Mercantile search is better than terrible search.

now they are product matchers