That's unfair to altavista. Altavista never got evil, they just became irrelevant. (And even when they were irrelevant, they still had a search syntax that I miss. You could search for things like term_a NEAR term_b.)

Amen. Buried, unknown to most, Google used to have a similar AROUND(n) syntax. No idea if it still is respected.

Google seems to have refocused around returning any result out of a set of popular links rather than deep dives. It feels like I must quote every term I enter now.

It seems like none of the older powerful Google search syntax works for me anymore.

And quoting terms doesn't even force them to be present anymore.

I don't think this is true, although the quoted terms may not be readily visible. Google talked about it as late as last year: https://blog.google/products/search/how-were-improving-searc...

Citation needed? Because it does for me.

I have noticed that too. Google has become so useless. And with all the little knowledge stuck behind reddit dark patterns, discord locked and utterly unsearchable world. And the modern forum stuff a mess of slow JavaScript that loads on demand. It's like finding knowledge is a fine sand fallings between the fingers. YouTube has some bit of interesting content, but it's 10min for 30s of info plastered with sponsored content. And finding something is harder and harder. ChatGPT and the like won't resist long becoming the same.

My only hope is that it will eventually bring back the notion of trust. Naybe finding a programming job will be harder outside of your network of friends. But won't require silly interviews anymore. Maybe we will get back to lifelong tenure at work?

Anyways I am just rambling here. What do I know anyways.