Not sure if sarcasm or not. These results demonstrate that the HN zeitgeist about the utility of Google is not related to its actual utility to the public at large.
This is very noticeable. I remember everyone here saying Atlassian was a sinking ship when they switched to cloud-only. Ever since, its stock has almost doubled. I can probably think of a pretty big list of other things where HN hivemind completely misaligns with how 90% of the normal population thinks.
Doesn't really follow. a) Google is a lot more than search and b) it's not like people noticing "crap, search results are getting worse" suddenly stop using it entirely, given there is no clearly superior competitor. Similarly with many other products.