I don't feel it's particularly controversial to think that Javascript shouldn't be a requirement to use the internet. This is one step towards making that the case.
From a normal browser (don't ask me what I mean by that), with its normal/default user agent, Google search does not work without Javascript. I think at all, any more, but at some point I had got rate limited of sorts, after using the search without Javascript for a little, I got a prompt to enable it.