It feels like Google was able to enshitify their results by loading with ads and going for longer 'engagement' times because it used to be worth it to persist with Google until you got their best answers.

They optimised for profit. Now what?

If they address the competition then they have to undo that optimisation and cut into their own profits.

My guess is they won't settle for merely extortionate profits, they won't address the competition fully and so people will flip to using LLM-first search.

I'm hoping that in a year or so we're asking why Google went from being the top search on Bing to being only one of many - principally LLM-based - tools people are using for getting answers (most of what 'search' represents now). IMO Google could do with knocking down a peg or two.