Using double quotes has been busted (at least for some searches) for literally years. This isn't, in general, a new phenomenon. You were lucky it worked for you as long as it did.

Double quotes don't work. Putting '&tbs=li:1' at the end of the search string to get "verbatim" results no longer works. Most of the "hacks" from this 2003 O'Reilly book don't work: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/google-hacks/0596004478...

It's all turned to shit.

What is going on here?

Read the other posts for some other ideas of what's happening.

My opinion is that Google doesn't need to care. The company's market cap, as of today, is $1831 Billion dollars. So Wall Street doesn't care either. Larry Page is hiding out in New Zealand, and he probably doesn't give a shit either. :-)

Whereas duckduckgo will return stuff that actually matches your search.

One upon a time Google was a really cool search engine. Entire books were written about how to use it wisely. E.g.

   Google Hacks    100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools 

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/google-hacks/0596004478...

Now, it's impossible to properly qualify searches. Quotes don't mean shit. Appending "&tbs=li:1" to get verbatim results doesn't mean shit.

Google just does whatever the hell it wants to. Which is probably great for the unwashed masses but really sucks for advanced users.