I don’t agree that Google is optimizing for time wasting, either. The faster they get you to click an ad link the faster they get paid. The phenomenon with rec

I don’t agree that Google is optimizing for time wasting, either. The faster they get you to click an ad link the faster they get paid. The phenomenon with recipes that you mention has nothing to do with Google: it has more to do with copyright. You can’t copyright a recipe, but you can copyright written commentary about cooking a recipe. The recipe blogs also need enough content to place ads around.