Easy. Google doesn’t sell search. They sell ads and consumer data. The longer you spend searching, the more they make from both. The ideal scenario for them is to give search results that feel helpful enough that you keep coming back, but are actually so useless that you never find a link that takes you away from the search results for good.
!["I do not want your Gemini, I do not want any AI. [...]"](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/79f03c67-e525-4e4c-aed4-cd68dd8398dc.png){kind=link}
Easy. Google doesn’t sell search. They sell ads and consumer data. The longer you spend searching, the more they make from both. The ideal scenario for them is to give search results that feel helpful enough that you keep coming back, but are actually so useless that you never find a link that takes you away from the search results for good.
There’s even emails that are now public record due to a court case with the Department of Justice that confirm this!
Wonderful, but very long (and detailed) writeup here.