Sure, there is a lot of crap, more than ever, but finding the good stuff in the pile of crap is what search engines like Google are for.
I don't know why Google search results appear to be worse. Bing (and its many proxies) are not getting better either, so it is probably not only Google's fault.
Among the explanation I can think of:
- There is a cognitive bias: results are not actually worse
- There is an arms race between search engines and people trying to game the results (SEO), and SEO is winning
- There is a recent disconnect between what is in best interest for Google (and Microsoft) to show you and what is best for the user.
- We are reaching some technical limits. We went from simple indexing, to PageRank, to deep learning, constantly improving, and now we are stagnating.
- Google (and Microsoft) is suffering the large company syndrome, which is like SEO form the inside: employees optimize for their paycheck instead of the quality of the end product, and the corporate structure can't make these goals match.
What I don't believe:
- Google is turning evil: Google is not evil, Google just wants to make money, it has always been the case, and giving out great results made Google a trillion dollar company. AFAIK, Google is not owned by Satan, it has no reason to "turn evil" unless it makes them money, and why it would abandon a "not evil" strategy that worked so well in the past requires some explanation.
- There is a simple solution: Google may be a corporate mess, but people there are not completely stupid. If there is a simple solution that fits in a random HN post, they would have done it. As they say, for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.