[reilly3000]

Page speed has long been a search ranking factor, but as Google News is now allowing non-AMP pages in the News Carousel with the requirement that they pass all 3 Core Web Vitals checks. This has forced a lot of search-dependant, ad-driven publishers to reevaluate their priorities and get better at page speed and UX. I led an effort to do so at an enterprise publisher, so I'm looking at it from that lens where we dropped lots of 3rd party libraries, services, and underperforming ads. You're right that many sites simply don't care. Google delayed their full rollout of what was expected to be a requirement in June 2021. When it is fully in effect, you probably won't be seeing super ad heavy sites ranking in mobile search as much. Sites that live off of social traffic may continue not to care.