it's not just SEO, they removed essential features like verbatim search, they constantly autocorrect uncommon search terms and they keep trying to optimize searches to only look for results within your bubble
Google once started out with the goal to index all human knowledge so people could find anything, but they seem to have settled into only helping people find the obvious easy to find stuff, while actively hiding anything that's slightly out of the ordinary.
I think this is the best description of what's happened. The only thing I really use Google for any more is if I have a development or design issue. I no longer use it for shopping or literally anything else I would use it for because of what you're talking about.
A five years ago, I noticed most of the results were all paid ads, at the top and bottom of the page and in the right hand column. Then you'd have a long list of Amazon product links. By the time you finally found the company or product you wanted, you were five pages deep and wondering why it was so hard to find something that just a few years earlier would be in the first couple of results.
I just gave up using it - to me its become completely useless. Its a last ditch resource I use if I really need to find something.
It's the investing that ruined Google search. Instead of search it's super smart, and as a result super annoying. It would be so much better if they kept it as is and just worked on removing spam.
Doesn't always work. For example Google seems to "auto correct" Gasgerd, a widely used nickname for former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder to Gasherd with and without quotes.
