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You can just search ... no # in front of Google still leaves you with "Google".

Search itself isn't the magic of hashtags. The magic is that a hashtag name is actually commonly agreed unique string ID of a theme or trend. How many unrelated results would you get if you search just for Google?

There's no consensus amongst hashtags... not even to actually use them or not!

There's no active consensus, but a defacto standard emerges.

If I want to talk about Google+, I'm more likely to use a hashtag, such as #googleplus, I've seen before. I could be a rebel and use #gplus, but it makes more sense to use already-established tags.

If we just experimented with hashtags on HN for a day or two, I'm sure they'd be hard to drop. (Although currently, I believe # is not allowed in titles)

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