I'm currently discussing the issue of vetting and "user-first" committments with a Google employee on G+, though concerning issues other than this. To put it mildly, I'm not at all convinced by developments I've seen at the company over the past 2+ years, if not longer. Actually, I'd pin this on when Gmail was first released. Prior to that, Google was simply something you used, but not as a registered user.

I've since elected out of Google search as my browser's defaults.