> Yeah, it baffles me why Netflix, a company with deep pockets and enormous technical talent, deliberately makes their search shitty and instead seems to be pushing algorithmic "recommendations".

The reason seems obvious to me. They want to mask their lack of content. It always seems that Netflix is trying to discourage search. I guess that's because there's a good chance whatever movie/tv show you're trying to search for won't be available. Netflix only has 35 movies out of IMDb Top 250 [1]. Pretty sure the number is even less for other countries.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/9gksft/netflix_only...