Brands don't mean much when they're constantly bought up by other companies and then used to whitewash poorer quality products.

Yes, trademarks don't make sens when the entity behind them can change completely. The whole point was to protect consumers.

They don't build them like they used to, in my experience most consumer electronics/appliance brands that are still considered high quality are just coasting on the reputation they built up in the 70s, 80s and 90s. In many categories it's getting almost impossible to find products that aren't just generic whitelabeled junk resold by "established brands".

Very true. Two other things are happening.

1. The whitelabeled junk is getting very good. In some categories, the brand name stuff has degraded to the point that the aliexpress version is better and cheaper.

2. The IoTification of everything means that a lot of traditionally long lasting items are as durable as their WiFi board - i.e. not very. This also plays into number (1) - where cheap, Chinese, items either lack IoT features or provide them only locally instead of requiring an online account.