Just because they could, doesn't mean they should. But I guess they decided to anyway - it was around that time that adverts shifted from being clearly labelled to being disguised as search results.
This has been a 20 year process with no single step-change. Ads used to be on he right side in colored boxes. Gradually, they started to appear above results and with no background color.
My results might have been thrown off by my searches including "google ads", which is the name of the ad platform itself.
Having to search through more pages to find what you want = more time spent on search = more ad revenue. The word "google" has become so synonymous with searching the web that any competition among non-technical users is near impossible.
Google directly benefits from making their search results worse.
Their Gemini commercial feels like a death knell. They never had to advertise when their products were good.
Speaking of Gemini, I can't really remember the last time Google launched a successful product. Why bother using and depending on it when you know it will be replaced by another product within a year.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
> State codes (including that of Delaware, the preeminent state for corporate law) similarly allow corporations to be formed for "any lawful business or purpose,” and the corporate charters of big public firms typically also define company purpose in these broad terms. And corporate case law describes directors as fiduciaries who owe duties not only to shareholders but also to the corporate entity itself, and instructs directors to use their powers in “the best interests of the company.”
> Serving shareholders’ “best interests” is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value.
[..]
> More to the point, corporate directors are protected from most interference when it comes to running their business by a doctrine known as the business judgment rule. It says, in brief, that so long as a board of directors is not tainted by personal conflicts of interest and makes a reasonable effort to stay informed, courts will not second-guess the board’s decisions about what is best for the company — even when those decisions predictably reduce profits or share price.
The founders and early investors got the shares with voting rights, plus non voting shares they could sell to cash in, while retaining their control of the company.
> A Summary of Alphabet's Class Structures
Class A: Held by a regular investor with regular voting rights (GOOGL)
Class B: Held by the founders, with 10 times the voting power of Class A shares
Class C: No voting rights, typically held by employees and some Class A stockholders (GOOG)
This is the Friedman doctrine:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
It has been popular since the 1970s, but there is plenty of legal precedence that says otherwise:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory
Including recent SCOTUS rulings:
> While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits. If for-profit corporations may pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason why they may not further religious objectives as well.
* https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.ht...
* https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-354/case....
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,....
See also:
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-t...
The late Lynn Stout wrote an entire book on the myth:
* https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
* https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
* https://evonomics.com/maximizing-shareholder-value-dumbest-i...