[solarkraft]

> Users expect much more than returning bunch of blue links with matched keywords in response to their queries. They want much of the time direct answers to their questions.

Well, yes (and Google does that remarkably well sometimes) ... but also no. I often just want good results, damn it.

I do suspect that this type of technology would be helpful in judging whether a combination of words might actually be relevant to the query rather than just containing some of the same words - so the underlying challenge might end up being the same.

[borapdx]

Yes, there are cases users want links and there is no problem displaying them in the results with direct answers e.g as sources. It is really about the change of focus, to providing direct answers, in both short and longer form, as opposed to just the snippet. Snippets have been around from the very beginning and they served us and Google well but it is high time to move on from line and a half with bunch of dots in between words.