TBF Google found they already owned a first-tier social network. It was disguised as a video sharing site. The article quotes someone as saying history repeats

TBF Google found they already owned a first-tier social network. It was disguised as a video sharing site. The article quotes someone as saying history repeats itself. Debatable. Google built Alphabet to be defensible against antitrust cases like this. Expect a consent decree. As you wrote: "I do see a place for language-model driven search." And unlike social media this has less dependency on user perception of whether a social network is cool.