I think this is one of those things where you might think that, and the numbers might show it, and yet if you remove it human nature will surprise you. People expect to be able to find and share everything, including the long tail of their interests. If they suddenly can't, they'll look for alternatives. In the case of Google, there are a lot of alternatives and while Google just keeps getting worse, the alternatives are better then ever.
Even if a person only searches for news items a few times a month, if they suddenly can't do that, they'll just go find an alternative search engine.
