It’s a bit funny and sad how Google has both managed to seem overly clever to the point of being clumsily useless, and at the same time, continues to offer the original search experience that people pine for but no one knows or can be bothered with: add “intext:” before keywords and it’s the experience you’re wishing for.
I just tried a few of my old "dry" queries (as in, things I've always wanted to look for but can't seem to get good results) and didn't notice much difference... Furthermore, after a total of 3 "Next Page"'s, I got IP-banned with a CAPTCHA.
I've had similar experiences recently with "site:" and the other colon-operators, so not entirely unexpected, but still immensely infuriating. It's almost like any real attempt to find what you're looking for, if it's rare, will result in punishment. :-(
Good software is when both kinds of users are pleased. As Alan Kay said "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.". But it's probably the hardest thing in UX design to make something that is simple and powerful at the same time - most things sadly end up being only one of the two.
I agree, but I didn't say that good software doesn't please its users. I said you generally shouldn't optimize for power users and that software should be usable.
Its likely you are using "privacy" plugins in browsers that obfuscate who you are to Google. "A friend" of mine has the same issues with them (constantly harassed like they're a bot).
