This has been my experience as well. Google, Bing, DDG, they all fail to work well in some major form or another. Google and Bing don't let you do explicit search demands with quotes; all the power tricks for search are gone and I routinely find myself frustrated with trying to find some things-- especially if they fall into the gaps where Google insists on excluding a term.
I would gladly switch to a search engine that just got it all right in the way that Google pre-2010 did.
I would gladly switch to a search engine that just got it all right in the way that Google pre-2010 did.