Maybe this is giving reddit too much credit, but I do see people say "append reddit to searches" literally every time the topic of search is brought up, so what if reddit is aware people do that but doesn't want to be a search engine?

Imagine you're one of the few remaining sources of human content on the Internet, and you look at the terrible cat and mouse game google plays forever with spam, you don't really envy it. So imagine telling the world hey, reddit is the new google, everyone come do your searches (and spam) here, gl mods.

This doesn't ring true to me. Reddit has clearly demonstrated a desire/mandate to monetize, even at the expense of its users. If they thought they had a viable Google competitor they wouldn't look that gift horse in the mouth.

The fact that unpaid volunteers (mods) are handling the spam problem is an upside.

I disagree with that. It doesn't matter if Reddit doesn't want to be a search engine. People are already using it a search engine and they simply will never stop no matter what those ppl in Reddit are thinking. Better to embrace the search use case and make it search friendly.

With big power comes greater responsability.

Is this phenomenon also happening in the markets were Google is not dominant? Like Yandex, Baidu or Naver?