I think the main reason people search Reddit from Google is more that Google's search results are bad, not that Reddit is great. When I search Reddit instead of Google, it feels like a hack to work around the fact that Google is overrun with spam.
And, to the extent that Reddit is an essential information source, it's largely because Reddit (and other social sites) destroyed the small websites and blogosphere where this information used to live. Reddit is now kind of the only game in town, which to me is a success for that business, but overall a failure for the web. Compare it to Walmart and Amazon in the retail space: is the fact that we now only shop with those massive companies a victory for the wider retail landscape, or just for those corporations?
Anyway, good point, thank you for the response.I would still like to hear what the original commenter has to say.
I disagree here, Reddit didn't destroy the small websites, the users leaving the small websites destroyed the small websites. Reddit did not put any duress on the users and force them to leave. Instead having everything they wanted in one place without 20 different logins motivated the users to stay on Reddit instead. Convenience motivates individual action.
Also, coming back to your first point on Google, but tying into Reddit. Spammers are destroying the internet. The reason Google is failing is spammers are expending far more energy to spam than Google is willing to spend to detect spam. Reddit is still very willing to expend energy to prevent spam on their site, hence becomes a higher quality source of information than the average search.
The size of Google and Reddit both make them targets for spammers, and I believe eventually their success will be mostly eaten by the costs of preventing spam from ruining their services.
What you find on Reddit represents the views of a small number of moderators and PR organizations.
Reddit has some serious flaws to be sure, and some really shitty subs, but the "genuine, peer-to-peer information" is found there in the weird little niche subs. PR organizations don't care about modified IBM Model M keyboards from 1985, but there's probably a subreddit out there dedicated to just that one thing, with a bunch of genuine information from genuine people who like to modify that keyboard. I could probably find another subreddit dedicated to restoring electronics from the 1940s, something else I'm sure no "PR organization" cares about. There's countless other examples just like this. In fact, if Reddit were confined to extremely narrow special-interest hobby groups like this, it wouldn't have the bad reputation it has now.