@danluu And 10 years ago was significantly worse than 20 years ago.

The original Google Search was magic. It improved somewhat for a little while, and then it's been downhill ever since.

People scoff when I say that, very obviously thinking "No, Google's been fine until I started actually noticing how bad it is". No, Google's not been fine for a very long time. You just took the Google you first encountered for granted. You only started to notice the problem when there was enough of a change that even you could see it. You never had any idea what you were missing.