Or maybe because it's impossible to guarantee that you'll find what you're looking for and you may not even be looking for anything specific, making "search" a more honest and literal term? I'm not saying Google results haven't been getting worse, but blaming that on Google entirely instead of rampant SEO (which is mostly used by people who want to make money, not people who want to provide useful information) and the lack of hand curated directories to steal relevant results from are likely just as detrimental to good search results as Google's ad prioritization. While Google certainly hasn't been helping, the web has been falling apart (in terms of usability at least) for at least a decade. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetency.
Your comment is asinine but that’s a great gimmicky perspective for a competitor to distinguish themselves. “Don’t search, find”
I had a customer once that wanted a 'find' feature instead of a 'search' feature. Which was not a bad idea, it makes sense, you want to find something not just search for it. However, they also insisted the 'find' button would fall and bounce a few times after you click it. You win some, you lose some ;)
Actually, often you must first "search" (aka go to some search page to enter search terms) and only then you can click the button "find" - unless the search controls are already on the page you're on.
'You tell us what you want, we show you what you need.' TM