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I do agree with your conclusion, but the catalog in most online shops is certainly not impartial. Amazon sells the entire first page of search placement, for example.

But we know it and it's obvious.

Within a few years people will be accustomed to the idea of AI chatbots selling them stuff and it will be obvious then too. The first time paid placements appeared in a catalog, it was probably also not obvious then.

catalog ads are labeled. "what's the best something I can buy?" is begging for unlabeled ads that go against your interest. if you literally cannot tell between ad and not ad, you can't skip to actual results, it's useless.

Catalog is an ad, the SKU database behind the catalog is impartial (at least as much as it gets), but no one is giving you access to that.

Catalog is impartial? Then why are ~40% of every search I do on Amazon a sponsored product? There is no pure "catalog" especially with cheap crap coming out every day from no-name Chinese labels.

Am I the only one that think Amazon has gotten pretty awful in the last 5 years?

more like 20 years. Basically when they introduced third party sellers.

You can skip sponsored products