To begin with the searcher never indicated they are interested in actually buying a mattress (for example by saying 'mattress price' or by clicking the shopping tab).

Now maybe Google infered that for them, right or wrong.

The problem then becomes that what is presented is not mattress-buying information which could for example consist of information about different mattress types, reviews and discussions (how many of you would be forced to actually type 'mattress reddit' in this scenario?). Instead it is a page full of ads. It does not help the searcher make a buying decision. It actually makes their job harder with so many options to choose from and very little condensed information to help with the choice. All those brains and AIs at Google "organizing the world's information" are nowhere to be seen as literally all the cognitive load is transferred back to the searcher.

What is wrong with that is that Google's mission states "organize the world's information" (and this was a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate that) while what Google actually did was "organize the world's ads". Sad thing about it is that there was a point in the past when that was not the case.

No. Mattress business is one giant hornet's nest where deception, false claims and high margin are norm. Most companies who sale mattress actually don't do squat of real research or improvement or even own design but they keep claiming to do so. Their entire business depends on attracting customers through false ad and making them spend $1000+ mattress which takes a fraction of cost to make it. Their major expenditure is literally these ads. There are few other businesses where organic results would be more appreciated by customers. I'd personally spent months in to digging through this garbage and ultimately settled on my chiropractor's recommandation while making sure he used exacly same mattress on his own bed. There is no sane way left to buy a mattress on Internet.

I go out of my way to avoid clicking on ad results and buying things that are heavily advertised (certain VPNs, audiobook services etc) because if they are trying that hard to push ads, it is almost certainly shit targeted towards uninformed consumers.

Those results are not the best value or most popular or highest rated or most comfortable or highest quality. They are the ones with the most money blow on internet ads.

Yeah, and DDG’s results for “mattress” aren’t much better:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mattress

Basically a map listing three mattress stores, followed by two ads. Then finally a few non-ad results, but still stores selling mattresses.

If you’re on desktop, there’s a bonus ad on the right sidebar, below the definition.

Only if you specifically want to buy from a company that wastes money on advertising, making the mattresses more expensive.

Obviously not ones that are advertised? Isn’t that what organic search is for?