Google isn't a search company, and hasn't been ever since they bought DoubleClick. Their core business is advertising.

They're trying to pivot into AI because they have gobs of "evidence" that the vast majority of people have been typing natural language questions into Google instead of looking for specific terms

Google pre 2010 was perfectly functional. No realtime search suggestions, advanced search parameters that were actually working, possibility of doing an exact string search if needed.

The technology for indexing the web was mature enough by then, already then.

I agree that much of the downward spiral was caused by google itself, tho.