Google isn’t the CIA or NSA. They don’t have that kind of staying power because they don’t have any guiding principle beyond profit (for better or for worse).
Google dominates search, browsers, and mobile operating systems. CIA and NSA inly wished they had this (well, thanks to CLOUD Act they do, through Google and others).
People not taking Google seriously is precisely why all this shit like Manifest V3 is happening.
As for search: Google has been watering down search for years trying to make it "understand" human speech. This has been a failure and not ChatGPT exists that can actually (apparently) understand english and replies in English too. It's an excellent first pass to get me the information I'm after. The responses from ChatGPT leapfrog me over the first 4-5 rounds of Google searches and right to the point where simple 1-2 word searches on google/bing can get me across the finish line.
They will try again in a year, and there will be less opposition (because people get tired of fighting etc.), and this will happen