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
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!