This is the process Cory Doctorow termed “enshittification.” Services start out by prioritizing functionality for the users, even running at a loss to do so. This is one reason why new companies have a massive burn rate compared to their income.

The second step is they stop prioritizing users and start prioritizing “partners.” Those could be news sources, sellers, whatever. User functionality is compromised to optimize the “partner” experience.

Finally, they start to fuck over partners too, in order to shovel as much money as possible into the company’s accounts. Facebook did it with news sites - especially video. Twitter is doing a speed run on this. Google is accused of being well on its way with search, and I have no idea about their other services.

So, yes, Google may fuck up search just like Facebook fucked up their feed and Twitter is fucking up absolutely everything.

To people who know what’s going on sure, but for most users, if its not on the first page of Google it doesn’t exist.