I agree. Google's removal of the discussions filter was a big blow to the openness of the web. There are some hacky solutions that emulate that feature but it is not as good. I was hoping Bing might pick up on it and introduce similar features, but it looks like their ad sponsors are just not happy with people having instant access to uncensored and unmoderated product discussions and reviews.
"Google's removal of the discussions filter was a big blow to the openness of the web"
This!
With that filter I could name a product and find common people talking about it, now all I find is companies selling the product.
This is getting even worse when searching political topics because from mixed people discussing the topic I now find only news sites or biased sources promoting their point.
You can use the query below (or something similar) to narrow results to include keywords found in popular discussion boards (modify it to suit your needs):
