> Search Type: Sub String Exact Regular Expression
Google has an advantage in terms of index size, but definitely lose in terms of precision. The way it munges queries is a bit unsettling at times, and even the "exact" option doesn't seem to always work the way it should.
That is a huge improvement over the normal search, but unfortunately it's not truly verbatim. For example, searching for `self` with the backticks turns up results for just self with no backticks. It works with some symbols but not others, not sure why.
I remember using the UI through telnet archie.mcgill.ca. It showed percent progress. The location used a 32-bit signed int. When the archive exceeded 2GB, the percentage became a negative count to 0% rather than count-up to 100%.