I had noticed this too but assumed it's part of cost cutting projects inside Google - like how they increased the number of unskippable YouTube ads from usually 0-1 to minimum 2 often 4 in a row, at every 5-10 minutes, or how they removed free photo storage in a time when disk pricing is at it's lowest point, or how the subjective quality of experience with their services has degraded to unimaginable lows (i.e. Google Drive, which is so buggy it's not even funny, often failing to fetch files with hundreds of failed API requests and taking a few minutes to "process" downloading a file - often failing with 40x errors).

It may just be a part of the strategy to lower costs after achieving domination in most markets.