It’s old, it’s useless, it’s annoying and according to one linguist, the Internet bell doth toll for the apostrophe, among and other arcane punctuation.

‘People are absolutely confused about punctuation, particularly about apostrophes,’ says Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of Alphabet to Email: How written English has evolved and where it’s going.

(Link)

As for the assertion that Google “doesn’t care” about punctuation, compare searches of “it’s” and “its”, “side’s” and “sides”, or your own combination. There are plenty of differences in the results lists.