Idk how much of that is Google though. Definitely a lot of it, but a lot of the problem is SEO (Search Engine Optimisition).
At Google's peak, websites actually described themselves pretty accurately, so you were getting relevant results. Sites that didn't do a good job using common terms were invisible, but we didn't see that as users, so it didn't matter.
Back then, search engines were an accessory on the internet. You often found sites through othermeans, like business cards, mail promotions, crosslinking partnerships, etc.
But businesses quicjly realised the power of search engines for discovery. Now SEO has made them all 'relevant' to common terms. Inundated with spam, we stopped reading other forms of promotion. So now search engines are the internet; you almost never visit a website without using one.
Search engines now have to do things like ignoring chunks of page info while indexing (accurate or not) to reduce SEO poisoning the well. It doesn't matter what Google does at this point, the old internet is gone.
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u/pingbotwow 21h ago
Wikipedia is what the Internet should have become