Yeah, I remember the long slow fade-out of the colored boxes the ads occupied. They went from like, pastel orange and green boxes, to lighter boxes, to even lighter boxes, to no boxes at all with the word Ad in a little symbol, to the way it is today where you have "Sponsored" on a different line than the ad, and you have to scroll below the fold to even see the first organic result, if there even is one, and only 2-5 organic results are even shown by default. And also of course in the mix, the AI Overview made up from I assume a handful of the spammy results being thrown through the cheapest, smallest model possible and summarized.

>they used to have the motto of not being Evil

They still do have it.

...at the very end of Google's Code of Conduct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil