> Ads only get viewed as long as Search is high quality and people don't switch to a competitor.
This is what someone thinking long term would conclude. On the contrary, lowering the quality of your search causes people to spend more time in the search engine since they have to try more searches. This in turn increases the probability of clicking an ad.
How would that explain Google search results getting worse though?
Ads only get viewed as long as Search is high quality and people don't switch to a competitor.
Ads fill up the top with sponsored results, but they don't affect the organic results. If by "the advertising guys won" you mean they got more sponsored slots, all that means is they got more sponsored slots. It doesn't affect the quality of organic results.
So I don't understand what your theory is here.