When did Google get so weird?

A recent commentary piece explores the perceived decline in Google's product quality and corporate culture. The author reflects on the company's transition from a user-centric search engine to a platform increasingly cluttered with SEO-optimized spam, intrusive advertisements, and questionable AI-generated search summaries. The article argues that Google's core mission has become obscured by internal bureaucracy and a desperate push to maintain market dominance in the face of new technological shifts. By examining the degradation of search results and the company's recent product decisions, the author suggests that Google has lost its original focus on utility. This critique highlights a growing sentiment among long-time users that the tech giant is becoming disconnected from its audience, prioritizing short-term metrics over the reliable, high-quality information retrieval that once defined its brand identity in the early internet era.