I'm also really disappointed by the modifications made to Google for the last few weeks.. I'm using Google to perform a lot of professional researches; it can be in different languages, or in different file types or I research by date. Before it was easy, now it's a pain in the ass.
I fully agree with all the comments from the people here. It's not better now, except for the "Any time"on the side. This one is a huge improvement for my personal use. For the rest the advanced search button on the page is the best solution.

I have now to switch more and more often to Bing that I don't really like but at least it does the job.
In addition, because i'm looking sometimes for some tricky words, the result is not exactly what I'm asking, even if I put it in bracket, but something approaching and I have to click on the "Did you mean instead..." to get my result.