I think the problem is that Google is extremely data-driven, and therefore tends to optimise things that are easy to measure. Click through rates, conversions,

I think the problem is that Google is extremely data-driven, and therefore tends to optimise things that are easy to measure. Click through rates, conversions, etc. is easy to measure, so that gets optimised. Long term user satisfaction & retention is hard to measure, so it doesn't get optimised.