Earlier search engines were your guide through a wilderness - they were there to help you find your way to what you were looking for. The place they were navigating through was, primarily, a realm of creativity (little homepage shrines, game faqs) and sharing (if you put it up on the net, it was assumed you wanted it shared).

However, the landscape and usage changed - the search engines shifted towards becoming your tourguides, making sure you found the gift shop during your experience. During this period, the web was mildly commercialised, and the focus shifted to sales. Things like the DMCA reared their ugly head, and "ownership" on the net became a thing.

A search engine today is now a salesman, trying to get you to buy something, from a mall full of predatory knock off shops. The net is all about personal ownership, save that the people who use it no longer own anything.

In the first iteration, searching for a way to fix a problem sometimes returned a solution (the internet was a hobby). By the second iteration, it almost always did, but the odd relevant product was usually recommend as well (the internet had a few full timers). In our current iteration, you get product recommendations, and never find the solution since it's all just copy paste bloat.