But we should also note that HN users are the "spearhead" of adoption curve and if there is ever any meaningful alternative to Google, just by the virtue of HN users adopting it, could mean strong propagation in their social circle - the less tech savvy family members, friends and work.
You're essentially proposing that less tech savvy users switch to something that requires more effort from them. Even if the results are 10x better--hell! they could be hand picked--it won't convince the average user to take a path of more resistance.
That said, I would love to see a competent competitor enter the marketplace--there already are a few. But I have a feeling we'll be heading back to a system of more niche/focused search engines in the future.
Not really. When I say meaningful alternative to Google, I mean something that is same or less effort for an average user, not more.
Ideally a perfect search engine is simple and easy to use in the default mode, but can uncover an advanced mode with a few clicks (for example ability to ban sites in results, just to give an example. This is currently lacking in Google and a solid source of advanced users' frustration).
There are a lot of good points here about why power users (i.e. HN types, technologists, scholars/researchers, etc) find Google Search frustrating, but it doesn't really provide a balanced perspective which would acknowledge that Google Search for the average, billions-scale user is an incredibly optimized, positive experience. For those users, Google Search is doing exactly what they want: providing instant answers to trillions of queries without making the user click or read anywhere else while making Google an absurd amount of money through ads. I'm not being facetious when I say that if you find Google Search frustrating, then you are no longer the target user of Google Search.
I've noticed that Google Search also provides too much weight on recently added/updated content than actual valuable content. A great example, while anecdotal, is Paul Graham noting that searching his quote on Google--`"Prestige is just fossilized inspiration."`--the first result is typically a third-party blog that is quoting him, not his own website where the quote was originally published. (Though he refuses to add SSL, which is why Google may be dinging his site.)
I, too, find Google Search frustrating for a lot of technical topics. The content ripping spam is overwhelming, even with technical topics. The past couple years, the proliferation of scraping sites that rip information from GitHub Issues/PRs/Discussions and StackOverflow information makes me incredibly angry and frustrated, and that is directly Google's fault for not identifying that spam and removing it. There is also nothing we as consumers can do because of Google's near monopoly on Search. We can switch to competitors, but it doesn't hurt Google's bottom line.
I have absolutely done the `${search query} "reddit"` 'hack' to find reading for my more niche queries--technical or non-technical. Reddit is a wealth of user-generated information, but it is typically a densely written answer and requires a user to comprehend that information. It can be easy to forget that the average reading level of a US adult is middle school level. That average user with a low reading level isn't going to spend their time trying to read paragraphs of text in order to both discover and understand an answer.
tl;dr Google Search is only dying for "us," not for the more profitable "everyone."