Although it didn't break it down further, the article said that the other 24% of people trying to get to Google "...either completely failed to get to any search engine or ended up running their query on a different search engine". So, some of that 24% were able to execute a search, just not on Google. Let's be generous and say 10% used something else (like the MSN search that comes up by default in IE).
My personal non-scientific experience is that users who are so internet-clueless are also e-commerce-phobic... They won't put their credit card and personal data "into the intarweb". So, the value to a retailer of this group of folks that can't master ANY search engine is probably much less than the cost of developing and promoting these sites based on such great domain names.
Now that's a good point I hadn't thought of! Hmm. OK, now I'm less optimistic about the Auctomatic deal. [that wasn't sarcasm, that was sincere]
I think the Plenty of Fish model (lots of traffic, high priced sponsorship ads and affiliate links to more targeted or efficient sites) is a better bet for high value domain names, given that characteristic that you pointed out about the people unable to find a search engine. They might not know what they're doing, but you can be darn sure they click on ads!
My personal non-scientific experience is that users who are so internet-clueless are also e-commerce-phobic... They won't put their credit card and personal data "into the intarweb". So, the value to a retailer of this group of folks that can't master ANY search engine is probably much less than the cost of developing and promoting these sites based on such great domain names.