By core products, you mean Search, Gmail and YouTube? Let's see.. Search these days seems to have given up on SEO blocking, Gmail has given up on any kind of U

By core products, you mean Search, Gmail and YouTube? Let's see.. Search these days seems to have given up on SEO blocking, Gmail has given up on any kind of UX improvements, and YouTube has given up on being a decent platform for either creators or viewers. I think the CRU's of the issue is Search is so big, and despite getting progressively worse, brings in so much money, that eventually people at Google realised it doesn't matter whether their products improve or not. After that, its just path of least resistance.