That was Amit's doing, actually. Around 2012, with the success of Knowledge Panels and the acquisition of Metaweb (FreeBase), he decreed that search would become a "conversational answer engine", devoted toward getting you the answer to your question as quickly as possible. The Hummingbird ranking update was part of that - it made it much more effective to phrase your query as a question rather than a bunch of keywords. Also renewed integration of Google Now into search, expanded Knowledge Panels, cards on mobile search, bigger investments in voice search, etc.