A: Absolutely, but the shortcut makes it viable to create on-the-fly links to search results (or use str8.to's I'm Feeling Lucky option) in IM conversations, or on twitter, or in emails (I recently told a client to http://look.fo/how-to-use-ftp) without having to go look up a good answer.
Q: Isn't this just a shortcut for (http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news)?
A: Absolutely, but the shortcut makes it viable to create on-the-fly links to search results (or use str8.to's I'm Feeling Lucky option) in IM conversations, or on twitter, or in emails (I recently told a client to http://look.fo/how-to-use-ftp) without having to go look up a good answer.
Stuff like that. Anyways :).