It’s been bad for a few years already but it is getting worse. A good chunk of the internet isn’t indexing anymore (places which require logins to get the content), and those that are largely exist to earn from the advertising, not to be helpful.

There’s actually an opportunity for a disruptive force here. If you can be better at search than Google, you could steal users. But duckduckgo and related are mostly trying to be old Google rather than better Google.