They started moving on from being a general purpose search engine years ago, when they started "knowing best". Round about the brand and recency updates, which

They started moving on from being a general purpose search engine years ago, when they started "knowing best". Round about the brand and recency updates, which must be 7 or 8 years ago, maybe more. No longer did you need to search "buy camera" rather than "camera" to show you wanted to spend money, it was now presumed. Your +term (broken with arrival of G+) or quoted "term" would be varied as much as optional terms. Nearly all the changes since have been along those lines. Google thinks the only reason to use the net is to shop. The results you get, that are prioritised make some sense in that context. It's just made it useless for all those times you don't want to book a hotel, buy a phone etc.