But here has Google has really made anything more human-friendly? They've simply removed a standard boolean operator in database search syntaxes because they noticed people were not using it (did people even know it existed?), or using it incorrectly. Does this make search more human-friendly somehow?
It certainly makes easy-to-type, using known standard operators, boolean searches more troublesome.
And the reason they have removed this operator?
Marketing. For something having nothing to do with search.
Oh I wasn't really commenting on Google's decision and whether it was right or wrong. Like you said before: "Time will tell". I was just offering an alternate view to your expressed optimism that Google's demographic (aka everybody) is becoming more tech savvy.
But here has Google has really made anything more human-friendly? They've simply removed a standard boolean operator in database search syntaxes because they noticed people were not using it (did people even know it existed?), or using it incorrectly. Does this make search more human-friendly somehow?
It certainly makes easy-to-type, using known standard operators, boolean searches more troublesome.
And the reason they have removed this operator?
Marketing. For something having nothing to do with search.