Yes, Google search results are worse than they were in it's height.

Google front page is a whale of a target. At no point has there been more sophisticated attacks for people trying to hit front page with low-quality content. The position you parent comment took is that Google of today is better at resisting those attacks, and no one version of Google would provide as good results on today's internet.

I believe Google is fundamentally failing at it's mission of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and it's earlier value of "Don't be evil". That's not to say that Google Search isn't better at searching today's internet than any other iteration of Google Search would have been.