Totally agree with you and the author of the post.

Part of the problem is the lack of filtering (or even sorting) on the client side to reduce the information overload to something you're willing to wade through, which would trade off results returned for query complexity (of course, this also assumes its been programmed correctly...).

We lose a lot using the 'search box only' query interface that google popularised.

If there is filtering, sometimes you can see how poor the integrity and/or quality of the data is due to some weird-ass categorisations, typing mistakes etc. etc.

Attempting to limit searches on laptops to a specific screen resolution did my head in on pretty much all of the major manufacturers sites.

But if, most of the time, what’s on page 1 is all you need, paying the extra time every time so that things are faster in the rare case you need page 6 is a net loss, both in user waiting time and costs for the site (often a big one).

Also, with smaller pages, site owners can track whether many users need page 2, 3, etc. and change page size or reload the next page’s data accordingly.