Google have forgotten what good search is - I suspect the airy fairy 'designers' have taken hold, and are warping the managements minds with tales of how they're gonna optimise the user experience by leveraging some of the core assets, without boiling the ocean. or some such.
Aside from the search results being different from the thing you asked for, they have of course been adding in AI. I actually don't have a problem with that, in some cases it's good, albeit at the expense of the website that gave them the information in the first place. I also note that 'search' is no longer on the home screen of Google Play - that decision seems probably the most crazy to me. Even Cloud Console seems to be getting harder to find things in, although it does still have a useful search. Don't get me started on the so-called Search Console though - that thing is just a crapfest. I'm glad I don't work in SEO.
If I were running Google, I'd make it an internal law that all pages, everywhere in all circumstances need to have a search on them - that's the core reason for their existence, and so they ought to be promoting "don't remember, just search". They ought to be returning search results as honestly and quickly as possible - by all means come in with AI or the bullshit results afterwards, but give me what I actually came for right away.
As for the search market, I can't see Bing getting anywhere, and DDG needs a new name. There's no one else worth thinking about, and boring old search isn't gonna get any investment money these days, and you can't vibe-code a new search engine in a weekend, so sadly, they might be as good as we can have for some years yet.