[thaumasiotes]

> around the same time Google lost their innocence and dropped the "Don't be evil" clause

When did that happen? It's still there.

[pfsalter]

Back in 2018 [1], at a similar time that there was a lot of moving about and restructuring. I think this is about the time that Google search started going downhill as well

[1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

[thaumasiotes]

Again, the phrase was not dropped. You might notice that your link is titled "Google removes nearly all mentions of don't be evil from its code of conduct". (By which they mean 3 mentions.)

But as that article notes, they didn't drop the phrase. It's there now. It's always been there. There was never a time when they dropped it.