Another issue is the cost of managing an ever increasing volume of material. Until recently, successful search systems involved human cataloging, indexing, or abstracting. These are expensive activities. Some crucial funding comes from the government, notably through the Library of Congress and the National Library of Medicine. The Web search programs provide a search service with no human intervention.
Nobody denies their low cost.
The programs are interesting technically, but the companies they have spawned are even more interesting. The companies have energy, expertise, rich investors, and are growing very fast. This past year has been a good one for raising capital, but the investors are looking for the companies to show profits. The companies have to be aggressive or they will fail. Some are going to be very big within ten years.