what your thoughts are in regards to this intervention of a search engine in providing an answer. Is it common sense to satisfy the query, or is it the job to serve up web pages that satisfy those kinds of questions?
It really is a matter of definition applied to capability :)
At it's most basic a search engine is a software information retrieval system.
The term, as commonly used, means a software system that takes a (usually) text input aka query and searches either or both a saved index or the Internet/WWW in real time for valid answers/responses that it subsequently displays usually in some method of relevance.
The first popular SE was Archie (1990), which searched/listed FTP file titles. In 1993 the first search bot (WWW Wanderer) was used to generate the Wandex index. Late 1993's JumpStation was the first 'true' SE in that it used a bot for discovery, built an index, and used a web form GUI to query results.
Those early SE result lists returned simply a file name or URL - hopefully the naming convention was descriptive, often it was not. Eventually, title, meta description, and/or meta keyword were also retrieved and returned or used to assist in determining relevance. Much simpler but still basically the format today.
Search engines acted as agents, middlemen, between their users, the human searchers, and the information held by the Internet/WWW. What they knew then was names/titles, descriptions of or terms contained, and an address - and that was what they returned as answers on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Once the SEs had mostly indexed the web, certainly far beyond their ability to return all that they had discovered to a query, so were largely on maintenance and in quality control mode the logical next step as IR agent for their users was to return direct answers where feasible rather than always provide redirection. Domains such as calculations and conversions, time and weather, were obvious low hanging fruit.
This step shocked many. And definitely damaged many a business model or hobbyist's popularity. While foreseen/forecast by a few most affected and many awakened to concern webdevs cried foul. They had (and many still have) the relationship between themselves and search engines backwards - they incorrectly believe that SEs purpose is to deliver searchers to them when in reality, from the very beginning, the search engines purpose is, as it always has been, to deliver answers to the searchers' queries. All that had changed was the addition of a SE answer capability.
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One sees the same ackbasswards in regards to AdSense. AdWords (G Ads) was created to monetise Google's SERPs. AdSense was simply a way to increase revenue by monetising the longtail, those searchers who left the SERPs by clicking a result link. The purpose was to extend AdWords beyond Google, Google was acting as an agent of the advertisers not the publishers. In both SERPs and AdSense the publisher is the fodder, the product not the client. Silly publisher!
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As time passed SEs have various other answer formats, largely following a similar methodology wherein initially the answer includes a diminished but extant link to where the answer was retrieved. This was and is not done to be nice or fair or what have you, it was and is done because (1) web derived info is full of errors and omissions, and (2) the algos start out stupid; it's legal CYA behaviour. Over the years real people have been inconvenienced, injured, even died from inaccurate search result directions/information. Once a SE believes it has sufficient domain expertise it drops the already minimal link and simply says 'here's the facts, ma'am!' courtesy of us. Not anybody else.
Facts are not copyrightable.
Fair Dealing, Fair Use are legal exceptions to copyright.
If a publisher does not understand and mitigate the above their business model is fundamentally flawed.
SEs are agents for their users, ad networks are agents for advertisers.
Publishers are the, increasingly commoditised, product of both SEs and ad networks.
If a publisher does not understand and mitigate the above their business model is fundamentally flawed.
@brotherhood of LAN: the reason you are
having to grapple with Search Engine Philosophy Regarding Answers to Questions is because many/most people have a mistaken conceotion of what a search engine is and for whom it is acting.
A search engine is an IR system (and a business) and it is NOT acting on behalf of the sources of the information it retrieves. That some benefits accrue to some publishers for some time is merely a (marketing) consequence of the main intent. It never has been else and I see no reason for this to change in the near future.
