"We think our current shopping results are useful and are a much-improved version of the text-only ads we showed a decade ago. Showing ads that include pictures, ratings, and prices benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, our users."

Really Google? I personally remember the advent of adsense and their initial ultra simple text-only ads being a huge revolution in advertising as a whole and a huge improvement in user friendliness. Now it's suddenly better to have images and extra stuff thrown in there.

Pretty soon, it will be even better to have some animated and interactive simians in them.