That was intentional

Why would people pretend to not understand the distinction? Free tech support?

Or is the comment missing `/s`?

No, but my brevity was unclear. The general population was taught to consider Google to be the Internet (not even just the web.) A couple of examples:

- Chrome obscuring the full URL in the address bar, which makes people use Google Search as if it were the address bar.

- Gmail being so popular that people assume `@gmail.com` is a suffix for all email addresses. You might tell a cashier your email address to sign up for discounts. When you say `[email protected]` they might end up typing `[email protected]` (this is, of course, an example.)

- Web search as a generic trademark "Google it" which most people now take for granted.

When people don't type in URLs but instead "google" everything by query, it's no surprise people conflate these different systems. My point in essence is that people who confuse Google/Web/Internet are just laypeople, not ignorami; they've been subject to a deliberate campaign by Google to make them think that.