Yeah, I suspect when they added all the "filter out all the piracy sites" features, and anything else that's bad on the internet, it really ruined what was once the most powerful search engine I had seen to date. I don't think we'll ever see that again. Probably also when they "personalized" the search results more and more.
What Google needs is a built-in way to block domains, like idk... Pinterest.
That's one more example of why operators are more necessary than ever - you can add a -pinterest to your searches and (at least for now) it respects it.
But I'm glad to see something finally done about my biggest gripe with Google (and even DDG sometimes does this): search results that don't contain the phrase, or not even part of it, that I'm specifically searching for, quotes be damned. If Google is finally getting the hint, good. This has been driving me nuts for years.
A plain, no algorithmic "enhancements," regexp search would rock. I've wanted that since the Alta Vista days, but I doubt I'll ever see it. It might be a bit expensive to do something like that over a Google-sized search database.
What Google needs is a built-in way to block domains, like idk... Pinterest.