If I recall correctly it's only the last decade things haven't been fragemented in the way the article describes - ie I remember there being a UK Google seperate from a .com Google. That actually seemed to perform better as a search engine because you still have access to international stuff but optimised for a UK searcher rather than what we have at the moment where it is fragmented down to a billion pieces each optimised for one individual but simultaneously completely missing our context and therefore don't seem to work very well as a search engine