Agreed. You can currently do two-step process to get to the old useful search by clicking "Find image source" in the side-bar Lens results, but it's inconvenient enough that I barely use it any more.

In some browsers/profiles I use a "Search by Image" extension that still works properly.

When Chrome first made Lens the built-in image search, there was a way to turn it off. Does anyone know if that's still possible by some more-hidden method?

100% this. Google Lense is a product search engine, not image search.

Agreed, nobody's life improved after they switched to that. There's stll a "Find image source" button above the picture in Google Lens that more or less does what you want

Totally. Even the regular search is mostly made of selling links.

And in quantity, it seems like 9/10th of the content is gone.