I just want to point out that this, "The world before Google was a worse world" might be true before 2000 or so, but certainly not for the past decade. Remember when Google result pages had sparse ads, that were clearly and boldly delineated from "natural" search results? Google was great then in helping me find stuff, I knew when I was clicking an ad, and the best products and services could still rise to the top of "natural" search results without paying a "Google tax". I also didn't get ads that followed me everywhere I went on the Internet, but I still had good relevant ads because Google had plenty of context from my search terms.
These days, nearly the first entire page of results is ads, which for most people look nearly the same as natural results. Google even gets most people to click on ads, and collect their pound of flesh, when the user typed the name of the business in the search bar. Google doesn't really need to worry that much about competing with other search engines for better natural results because they've mostly killed them all off. IMO Google's search engine peaked about a decade ago and has just gotten worse since.
These days, nearly the first entire page of results is ads, which for most people look nearly the same as natural results. Google even gets most people to click on ads, and collect their pound of flesh, when the user typed the name of the business in the search bar. Google doesn't really need to worry that much about competing with other search engines for better natural results because they've mostly killed them all off. IMO Google's search engine peaked about a decade ago and has just gotten worse since.