Second Life: What good is the big grid?

With teleporting to keep you from having to traverse the simulated space in Second Life, and a new presumably far more effective Google powered search system to make it possible to find things without needing to look at a map or learn where things are by flying around, and it being impossible to simulate traveling inworld from one land body to another,  just what is the purpose of having one grid for Second Life at all?   You can't travel all across the grid, any significant travel occurs via teleporting, you can't even see all the sims on the map at one time, much less paddle your simulated canoe from one continent to another, so what's the point of having all the simulations be said to be in one big rectangular simulation?

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