If you thought it's easy to get to Google, think again. In our current round of usability research, only 76% of users who expressed a desire to run a Google search were successful. In other words, 1/4 of users who wanted to use Google couldn't do so. (Instead, they either completely failed to get to any search engine or ended up running their query on a different search engine — usually whatever type-in field happened to be at hand.)
On the one hand, 76% is a high success rate. On the other hand, getting to Google is a very simple task. It's not even a true task — that is, it's not something users want to accomplish for its own sake or something we'd pose as an assignment in user testing. Getting a Google search box is the first step in searching the Web, which is only the first step in doing something real (such as, in one of our test tasks, to find "a strong vacuum cleaner that is easy to use, can pick up pet hair, and costs under $300").