I don't believe that Google intentionally lowers the quality of their search. Instead I believe that Google does intentionally experiment with search results to

I don't believe that Google intentionally lowers the quality of their search. Instead I believe that Google does intentionally experiment with search results to maximize their impact and as a result of that shaping, the search quality suffers, which is something Google simply accepts because the benefit of succeeding is more attractive. Facebook is very similar to that: They don't intentionally (at least not directly) enrage people and drive up disinformation, but it is a side effect of Facebook agressively manipulating the timelines, advertisements and comments their users get to see. But ultimately they do willingly cause it (and later people working at Facebook can tell themselves that they are hard at work to fight it, and that it is a difficult problem to solve).