What has Search done to the Web?

I came across this interesting video from 1996 where Marc Andreessen is interviewed about Netscape and the future of the Web in general.
Its fascinating to hear Marc's vision of the Internet and the inevitable question of how Netscape sees Microsoft. Ok, how does this relate to Web Search? Let me tell you.
When Marc is asked about the impact of the browser on the internet, he explains it as follows. (to paraphrase) The browser basically made it easier for more people to view the Web. Only as more people started viewing the Web, did it make sense for more people to create Web Pages. He adds a nice analogy here. Its just like we wouldn't have books if there weren't any readers.
I see Web Search as being fundamentally similar to this. The exposure and access to information that Web Search Engines like Google gave to the Web has definitely fueled the growth of the WWW. Although the impact of Web search on the quantity of Webpages is fairly clear, I am not too sure what the impact on quality is though. Then again, quality is too subjective an attribute for the most part.

Powerset (where I currently work) is building a Natural Language Search Engine. It is starting out with a Search Engine for Wikipedia, and then will move to the WWW. On the same note, I think Powerset has the potential to improve the quality of Wikipedia, by offering a better search for it (enabling more people to find what they want, edit what they want etc).
Google and other Web Search Engines have contributed a fair bit to Wikipedia's growth by showing Wikipedia results in the top search results for a lot of queries.
John Battelle's blog post cites Google and Yahoo! as showing Wikipedia results in 27% and 31% of search queries respectively.
Its going to be fun to see how Google's Knol plays into all of this..