I'm not sure about this. I know complete normies that lament how bad Google is now and how often the search is useless. I think many people just want search to search.
Googles quality issue seem to be, in part, a market driven choice. Services like Kagi use a large part of the Google data base but with all their additional capital extraction sorting on top.
Google can do it, but they must appease the share holders.
Every complaint about Google is evidence of someone who still uses Google.
Like, today, or the pre-chatgpt age where all the common questions have been spammed to death by SEO farms?