New Google Trial Docs May Explain Why Search Sucks So Bad Now
gizmodo.com.au
The Department of Justice and Google just rumbled their way past the halfway point of a landmark antitrust trial vying to answer a potentially industry-rupturing question: Does Google maintain its ironfisted stranglehold over internet search results because of its superior innovation or as a byproduct of ruthless anti-competitive jockeying and closed-door dealings? New documents revealed […]

tl/dr: email chains used as evidence in DOJ Google antitrust case show internal arguments about drops in # of searches, and how to increase them so that people see more ads. Search team wants to create better search results to keep people coming back.

Advertising team wants to find any way to make people search for as long and as often as possible (“increasing the journey length”) even if it means delivering less relevant search results.

You can actually read many of the trial documents here -
https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-google-llc-2020-trial-exhibits

this file was particularly interesting. https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-11/417557.pdf