[someguydave]

Yeah I wonder if Google realized that people were reading long form content (much of it hosted off Google) without ads. Thus their own audience was being shunted off-site without revenue.

That interpretation only makes sense if you think Google would rather have more good little click monkeys than organizing good content...

[arca_vorago]

From the lack of quality search results and the infestation of ads if you don't use an adblocker, I don't think that interpretation would be too far fetched.