And yet in a category where the natural results have become useless, the AdWords above and to the right can still be valuable. Ability-to-pay is a useful filter, and Google often looks more closely at the content and people behind those paid-advertiser landing pages.
As long as people aren't leaving en masse for another search engine, there is a margin at which Google makes more money when the AdWords remain useful, but the natural results are not.
Of course, Google still has to keep the natural results about as good as the external competition. But those other search engines have to fight the same SEO trickery that Google does. Competitors don't have the same ad revenues to finance the fight. Competitors don't have the same ad inventory to serve as a backup reservoir of market-filtered results. And competitors don't have the benefit of many-years of user-habit to try Google first. So, Google's scale advantage keeps growing, even if natural-search quality is middling.
As long as people aren't leaving en masse for another search engine, there is a margin at which Google makes more money when the AdWords remain useful, but the natural results are not.
Of course, Google still has to keep the natural results about as good as the external competition. But those other search engines have to fight the same SEO trickery that Google does. Competitors don't have the same ad revenues to finance the fight. Competitors don't have the same ad inventory to serve as a backup reservoir of market-filtered results. And competitors don't have the benefit of many-years of user-habit to try Google first. So, Google's scale advantage keeps growing, even if natural-search quality is middling.