Google deprecates the ~ operator

So…you might have heard by now, and have been asking: 
    Why did Google turn-down the ~ (synonym) operator?
As regular readers recall, up until this past week, Google used to have a single-term synonym operator.  That is, you could do a query like this:  
   [ ~beginner class ]       
-- and get an automatic expansion of synonyms for beginner (novice, freshman, inexperienced...)  
or you could write a query like... 
   [ homicide investigation ~officer  “San Antonio” ~report ]
You can see why users might like this--they want to get Google's synonym expansion for "officer" and "report" but not homicide, investigation or San Antonio.  That is, sophisticated searchers KNOW those terms (homicide, investigation, "San Antonio") will be in the articles they seek, but they don't know which synonym was used for "officer" or "report" or “account” or… whatever the synonym might be.

Read the full article @ SearchReSearch.