It's not about being useful, it's about being able to add more ads. With every widget they can put another ad. If it was one page with just search results (wacky, right?), you would think five places with ads on a single page! Buuut, put five widgets on the page, well, it's just one per widget.
Well ya Google is doing AI to stay relevant, but that's the middle step. They are already putting ads in ai results : https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/21/24161724/google-ai-search-results-ads-test
It's not about being useful, it's about being able to add more ads. With every widget they can put another ad. If it was one page with just search results (wacky, right?), you would think five places with ads on a single page! Buuut, put five widgets on the page, well, it's just one per widget.
You might say: Yeah, but then there also paying all this money on AI, clearly they are not so short sighted as to gets ads upfront but create a bad product! https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/in-response-to-google/
Oh and with regards to Peter Thiel's connection to the kid-slapping eugenicists (whom I've never heard of before), I've considered this DZM article as my awakening to the dire consequences of Thielty: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/07/01/from-one-to-zero-blockfis-fire-sale-shows-the-uber-startup-model-is-disastrous-for-finance/.
Agreed, good point! And glad you liked that Thiel piece.