What you don't understand is Google's been doing this for almost a decade now. It's about profit optimization while not pissing off your users, or sometimes helping them even.

A paid result can be a useful thing and might even be better than an organic result in many cases, but both have their pitfalls and it's not surprising for them to keep going this route more and more.

Google is a company, not a nonprofit. They are in it for the money. Why is anyone surprised?