are there no organic listings at all? or is it just that there are now way more paid listings so the first page is entirely paid placements? thats a pretty big difference.

I recall that when froogle/google-shopping first launched they were just filling in content from search results because they didn't have very much direct engagement by vendors. maybe that's changed now so the search results were just scaled back because not necessary.

I dunno. I'm willing to accept non-nefarious explanations for this. That doesn't mean it isn't on the whole better for google and their paid advertisers. Whether or not that also means its worse for consumers is an open question.