Am I really late to the party or did Google just drop the + operator from their search syntax? Is it some bizarre decision related to their Google+ service? (I feel silly even suggesting that.)

I noticed for the first time today when I got this message at the top of the search results:

The + operator has been replaced.
To search for an exact word or phrase, use double quotation marks

So now double quotes signify both "whole phrase search" and "required in results"?
What if I want to include a phrase in my search that doesn't necessarily have to be in the results? How do I frame my search query then? WTF, Google!

Update: OK, I see it is a recent development.
http://www.ditii.com/2011/10/23/google-plus-search-operator-discontinued/

The plus operator was useful for single words and it was intuitive, considering that the minus operator is employed to exclude results that contain a certain word.

Wasn't simplicity one of the virtues that helped Google become a household name? Looks like it's time to seriously start looking at alternatives.

Fair enough.

Social media has been around for what? 10 years? The internet (in its mass-reach avatar) for a little longer. I'm guessing all these unrelated concerns: organizations violating personal privacy, rampant online piracy, wikileaks and similar organizations exposing state secrets, botnets for sale, organized CC theft, etc - are pushing us all in one direction -> serious internet regulation. I wonder what things will be like in another 50-60 years...