> This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from search results in the first place.

This sort of mangling is exactly how exaggerated misrepresented news gets spread. Google didn't remove Kodi from their search results. You can type Kodi and it's the first thing that pops up.

You can type home theater software and get Kodi in the search results, or open source media player and get Kodi.

All they did is remove Kodi from being autocompleted. It still even comes up for autosuggestion.