I'm glad they got it right by saying that they aren't trying to do search better than Google. Making your competitor the standard for comparison sets you up for failure.
It's the reason an iPod-killer, Google-killer, Twitter-killer, etc will never be one.
I've noticed that newspapers (unhelpfully) will directly link to the home page of a university, but rarely link to commercial websites which they feature. I think this is an editorial policy to artificially maintain a veneer of journalistic impartially, but the effect amounts to lipstick on a submarine.
I work there, and our team spent a bunch of time on friday trying to get them to add the link. They claim they still haven't figured out implications of this 'internet' thing on their editorial policies, and trained all their copywriters..
The NYTimes has a schizoid relationship with the internet.
The NYTimes was the first paper on the 'net. Brewster Khale (founder of Internet Archive) helped them get there. In 2004 they started threatening the Internet Archive to get them to stop archiving their internet pages.
Then they started threatening Google. Then they put up the registration wall. But then they started paying "reputation" companies to spread their links all over the web. Then they started protesting that they should not have the burden of being the "paper of record", but still maintain "all the news that's fit to print".
It's the reason an iPod-killer, Google-killer, Twitter-killer, etc will never be one.