Searching versus Surfing project

the following pertains to a class research project which explores the difference between searching the internet and surfing the web.

The study Searching versus Surfing by Kevin Wise and Hyo Jung Kim defines the line drawn between merely “surfing” the web, aimlessly wandering the internet with no real goal, and “searching” browsing with a defined purpose. and that makes a lot of sense: you are much more likely to remember something that you had a desire to look for than some random piece of information.
In an experiment performed by members of Microsoft research, the experimenters had 20 different users view over 300 different web pages while conducting information foraging and page recognition tasks. The goal of the experiment was to see if there is a trend surrounding where internet users tend to look at a given page. This experiment found that viewers tend to look at the top left corner and surrounding areas: somewhat in the middle and the mid right area as well. These are all users who are surfing the web, browsing with an aimless goal. With this in mind, it makes a whole lot of sense why these participants in the first study were not able to remember as much as those who were searching the web because those with the designated goal were not just looking at images in passing: they were part of an assigned destination.
So when it comes down to it, it really just seems as if surfing the web is ultimately a huge waste of time, because it seems as if you are not really going to remember much of a given page after a glance unless you are really trying to delve into the information given.