Being able to compose a good query is still relevant I think! My peer once asked me for help with a mathematical problem, for which they could not find help online - after not much searching I could find a relevant page, given the same information/problem statement.

Sometimes I search for a while before giving up and deciding to post the question to Reddit. However, the process of describing the problem clearly and completely for an audience often causes the right search query to come to me and when I return to Google, I find what I was looking for immediately. An example of rubber-ducking where the answer is the right question to ask.

Not just auto-complete, but Google removing power search capabilities (quotes, plus, etc).

Here's hoping LLMs-as-a-service don't fall into the same trap.

It's fine to optimize for the 80% of your users who write badly, but for god's sake keep a bail-out for power users who want more control.

You don't have to make it the default... but just don't remove it!

> Not just auto-complete, but Google removing power search capabilities (quotes, plus, etc).

when did that happen? I still use them.

They still "work" in a sense but it soft ignores them and will also guess at what else you might mean, polluting your results. Some things like site: still work as expected. Been this way for years now.

> They still "work" in a sense but it soft ignores them and will also guess at what else you might mean, polluting your results

Doesn't it usually ask the user if they want to Search instead for "X" and then gives you the results? Its annoying when google thinks it knows best when I use " but it seems to work as it ever has after clicking the Search instead link

Google autocomplete using your query history also reduces the information you learn from suggestions as you do the searching...

While in the past "indexDB.set undefined in " might autocomplete to show safari first, indicating a vendor-specific bug, it'll often now prefill with some noun from whatever you last searched (e.g. "main window") to "help" you.

Haven't found a way to disable that, annoying for understanding bugs, situations/context and root causes.

I can imagine the response including questions. Eg “do you mean X or Y, here are the implications”. That way the machine gets better at helping us clarify our thinking. Right now it’s just blurting out a response that fits your instruction with no attempt to clarify.

And still _a lot of people_ cannot effectively use search engines. It is less about technical capabilities of the search engine, and more about (trained) skills related to finding and filtering information.