> Google dumbed this down and to this day is very difficult to accurately and precisely use.

I'm not sure that this is so much AltaVista versus Google; I remember when Google first came on the scene (or when I first became aware of it?), I found its 'expert' options better than AltaVista's. They have, as you say, become much, much less effective over time, but it seems sadly plausible that the same would have happened to AltaVista. (It does seem that DDG is doing its best to fill in the "search for techies" gap that Google now leaves open, but I don't remember AV well enough to compare them.)