It's critical to the functioning of the free market that consumers have accurate information.
The fact that Google is crap is less important. The fact that Google squashes competition and there is no unbiased search engine, is of national interest.
Current situation is because of a combination of Google's monopoly abuse and the fact that US govt does not recognise that search engines are(is) the entry point to a significant market. If you believe in the free market, then the state of Google search indicates huge inefficiency. A lot of people treat the term free market to mean "I, personally, am free to get rich, however I can, at the expense of everyone else." Which is pretty much the opposite of what it really means. It really means "you are free to join the market and compete on equal terms." Under those conditions best product/price should win.
The article still adds value as the reporter got a Google spokesperson to comment, and also brings the issue to a much wider audience outside of Hacker News.
I switched to DDG more than a year ago and I can honestly say that I've not had to revert to google search more than a handful of times since. A regular user would probably forget about Google in a breath if only they knew that such an alternative existed.