I agree generally with what you're saying, but I think they once at least tried to not be "evil". I don't think they are trying very hard any more.

They were willing to give RSS/Atom a crippling blow at the launch of Google Plus.

I remember Usenet going downhill immediately after they started pulling it into Google Groups (an unusable discussion platform).

I suspect that it will be the end of the WWW if Google is successful with AMP and the removal of URLs. Something new will have to be created from the ashes, though it may be difficult if Google controls the hardware, software (browser, OS), and potentially the network.

Google is motivated by getting people to click on ads. That's why Google Chrome's URL auto-completion is so bad -- you're supposed to go to Google Search on the way to your destination and click on well-concealed ads. I'm guessing that somewhere in the plan to hide URLs is a scheme to get people to depend more on search (to click on ads) and less on going directly to the destination. With AMP, the search and the destination are both google.com.