Are you seeing something else than I am? DDG looks lightyears better than current google now, at least on visual clarity side
You're being condescending but appear to have missed the point. The "Ad" text in Google's results is in the exact same position and is effectively the same pixel dimensions as the favicon.
It's cleverly designed and placed to resemble a favicon, to give the over-all layout more uniformity between ads and organic results.
As a user, I want less uniformity between ads and organic results, not more.
The screenshot doesn't show any Ad links in the text list results (unless the ads are wholly unlabeled).
It's not really the same case as the OP.
One could argue the words surrounding the carousel on DGG ("Shopping" and "Ad") are slightly more transparent than Google's "Sponsored" heading, but that's splitting hairs I guess.
In either case, I find both carousels pretty obvious in their intent. Maybe it's because the prices are being shown? I think more sophisticated internet users are trained to know that when you see a $xx.xx price on the internet, along with a link to purchase the item, there's probably some kind of commercial relationship happening behind the scenes.
These days, whenever I see a product mentioned anywhere on the web with links to purchase it, I default to assuming it's an affiliate link.