Google Does Not Have a Search Engine Anymore
Google wants to "retain" users for more "screen time" and influence over their minds; it does not save you time, it's manipulating you
Google started in the 1990s. Contrary to some nice-sounding creation myths, it was cushioned and supported by Big Money and a big university with government (and military) ties. It wanted software patents (monopolies) and got them. Some time soon we'll write a lot more about Google and what Google has become (or says it's becoming, will become next year, next decade et cetera).
In a lot of ways, Google is like a Western (NATO-ish, Six Eyes) version of TikTok, except it predates Bytedance and it's not controlled by BRICS (China even blocks it, quite understandably so). It's not trying to educate or inform you (sometimes it inadvertently does this, albeit only involuntarily), it's trying to make itself richer and its stakeholders more powerful. It pays companies, even competitors like Apple, a lot of money to pretend Google is omnipresent, inevitable, "the best"... whereas in practice it's strategically picking or making "winners" and "losers" through its sheer userbase (people wrongly come to assume that what Google presents as results is "the ground truth").
Suffice to say, other "branches" or tentacles of this Alphabet Agency (e.g. YouTube) are the same, they just deliver in different "forms" or protocols (chats that spy, multimedia that censors and so on). Google is in "smart" TVs (e.g. YouTube), skinnerboxes in billions of people's pockets (Android) and so much more.
I never trusted Google (since the 90s) and was very reluctant to even use/touch its search engine until some time around 2004. Alternatives could not compete for logistical and economic reasons. Then Google had Gmail (spyware), "News" (gateway or gatekeeper for news), AdSense etc. It was "eating" the Web/Net (even USENET), it was becoming hard to avoid or hide from. It was becoming a faceless censor that would not process or consider appeals.
Google does not seek to inform. If you notice the search results deteriorating (we did several videos about it in past years), you're not wrong and it's not just you. Increasingly, just like social control media companies, Google tries to ensure you don't even "leave" Google.com (or .uk, YouTube etc. - some have "infinite scroll" interfaces and autoplay for extra addiction) to visit some other page/domain. It's adding (injecting) navigation bars into pages (not just into browsers like Firefox) and it tries to offer "answers" instead of sending you to a good source (authoritative site). Sometimes it calls it "hey hi" (AI) but it's just some form of plagiarism perfumed as "fair use", with or without citation/link/attribution.
Google isn't a good "site" (or service). It never was. Maybe it temporarily was. We'll elaborate on this some other day █