> My feeling is that it's the web itself which has gotten demonstrably worse. Diagnosing the reasons for that is a more interesting problem.
I think it’s a little tricky separating the two since Google has so much influence over the web. A lot of the parts of the web which have gotten worse were due to decisions they made to do things like cut ad revenue for normal organic content, declining to punish or even rewarding blackhat SEO, pushing AMP, shuttering Reader, etc. That sold a lot of ads at the time and people said it was needed to counter Facebook but it’s left them more vulnerable now.
I think it’s a little tricky separating the two since Google has so much influence over the web. A lot of the parts of the web which have gotten worse were due to decisions they made to do things like cut ad revenue for normal organic content, declining to punish or even rewarding blackhat SEO, pushing AMP, shuttering Reader, etc. That sold a lot of ads at the time and people said it was needed to counter Facebook but it’s left them more vulnerable now.