I prefer Google circa 2005, but DDG and Bing work better for me now.

I've never wanted anything fancy:

- don't show me paid search results - show me a blank page if there are no results - make it easy to 'AND' terms (+include +search +terms) - most importantly: search for my damned search terms! If you want to "did you mean" my spelling, fine. I don't really care. But it's unacceptable to ever drop a search term.

I have plenty of other complaints about Google, but in terms of search quality, those are the relevant ones.