It's not the first time they have tried to get rid of the feature. A couple of years before the announcement they had a go at forcing a redesigned home page on us, and that omitted Quick Links. I complained, and my home page was reinstated.
I converted all my Quick Links to Bookmarks/Favourites in my browser soon after they announced that they would be going away.
Because I've been using my new scheme, I had not checked until just now whether they still existed.