Contrary to the usual Google hysteria around here, they held the line on disguised ads a lot longer than everyone else; but this is wayy beyond the "deceptive" line, at the level of Promoted tweets with their tiny, grayed-out bottom-corner labels. I remember a pretty robust employee culture of pushing back against even slightly deceptive things (though that was starting to change when I was there); I can't imagine how this change could have gone over without either significant employee restiveness or a dramatic cultural shift since I've been there.
Google search is reverting little by little to the pre-Google era of search engines being mostly catalogs of sponsored links.
1000% - remember when Google Adwords ads on search were in their own light-green or brown box? Hard to remember.
This is so utterly scummy. And what's sad is, no one will actually care.
Looks to me that Google is tapping out on growth if they sacrifice so much on product to meet their targets.