IMHO, it's the monopoly aspect that really jumped the shark.
Google as one among competitors (read: pre-Android/~2005) still had to be a useful enough search engine to attract users.
Once their search share attained hegemony, user satisfaction deprioritized (relatively) and revenue was allowed to dominate.
And thus, we now get a Google who has little interest in weeding out SEO'd spam. (And not as in 'tweaking their algorithm' -- as in fundamentally detecting and delisting all recipe-story porn and answer-mills)
Google had the same issue pre-monopoly. Since its early history it’s been trying to show users what other users like. “Correctness” was never part of the equation because search engines that paid deference to authority all sucked.
You can easily start a search engine using a different model. You’re going to struggle to compete with anything that prioritizes what users find popular.
Google as one among competitors (read: pre-Android/~2005) still had to be a useful enough search engine to attract users.
Once their search share attained hegemony, user satisfaction deprioritized (relatively) and revenue was allowed to dominate.
And thus, we now get a Google who has little interest in weeding out SEO'd spam. (And not as in 'tweaking their algorithm' -- as in fundamentally detecting and delisting all recipe-story porn and answer-mills)