The last official comment on anything related to this was a vague mention that resources had been taken away from the search quality team to work on other proje

The last official comment on anything related to this was a vague mention that resources had been taken away from the search quality team to work on other projects, but that they would be refocusing on search quality in the near future. Not sure if there has been much else in the way of official comment since then, but I can't imagine that they would let the cries (warranted or not) go unanswered for much longer.