I also agree that there is not enough justification given for searching
the web as proposed by the author. If I was looking for a specific
piece of information that knew existed in the web (somebody's home
page, a specific tutorial, etc), then this approach might be helpful, and
an analogy with "energy", "fitness" etc could be appropriate. But in
certain cases, a google-type approach might be more useful, where
we understand what we are looking for as we gather hints from the
results.

I would also like to know what exactly would be the difference
between so-called agents and best-first approach with a good
heuristic similar to the fitness value.