If it could be implemented that way and would be helpful where Google fails, then why has nobody done this? I’d love to try this out if you can point to a product that does this.

You can criticize LLMs all you want, but the fact is that they provide value to people in ways that alternatives simply don’t. The energy consumption is a concern, but don’t pretend there are viable alternatives when there aren’t.

I don't have insight on what goes on inside Google - they may well be doing this at some level, but their business isn't finding stuff, it's selling ads, so getting the search right is a very low priority.

The LLM people are heavily invested in ever bigger models to keep the research money flowing in, it wouldn't make sense to release a service that undercuts that.

that leaves independent actors - presumably building and maintaining an up to date database is difficult, so only the big search engines do.