Google has succeeded in enshittifying their search in a way that the vast majority of users (not customers -- those are the advertisers) have not noticed.
If the users aren’t bothered by the “enshittification”, does that reflect poorly on the CEO? The CEO is supposed to make money, and maybe has personal aspirations to improve the world. They’re not making art.
Like I said originally, I think the rise of ChatGPT is a partly a consequence of this. It’s not that people are choosing a different search engine, they’re not searching at all because LLMs will give a better answer faster.
Also, whether it’s ChatGPT or something else, five years is really not that long. Time will tell, but does it really seem like decreasing quality in the name of profits is such a good long-term strategy?