There is no proof of "degradation of search results" whatsoever. You could always find a bunch of search queries which don't work quite right and write a sensat

There is no proof of "degradation of search results" whatsoever. You could always find a bunch of search queries which don't work quite right and write a sensationalist article about it. Has anyone done a scientific study, involving careful observation of quality of thousands representative queries on Google over a prolonged period of time? No. If anything, the recent hysteria only shows how good Google has been at increasing people's expectation of search quality over the years.