Google losing discussions search filter

[4serendipity]

I noticed that, at some point over the past couple days, google has lost the discussions search filter.

I'm not sure if I'm in the minority, but I've been a big fan of this feature in my personal web usage, especially when doing product research. It was a great source to find product reviews done by real people as opposed to corporate entities. Furthermore, the discussion-filtered results always seemed to produce relevant results, so I doubt that this feature was removed because it was broken or lacking.

I'd be curious about others' views on the removal of this search filter.

[goodroi]

For the last few years Google has been streamlining and closing down underutilized features & services. I can't ever remember meeting someone in the general public that told me they use it. I know many webmasters that did, but that was probably not enough for Google to keep this feature - at least that is what I would guess.