The question is if Google became useless, or the amount of useless information it indexes somehow has skyrocketed ?

There seems to be a ton of mostly AI generated content out there (or simply keyword based), designed to grab your clicks.

It didn't? The fact that it doesn't conform to the author's strong ideological biases does not useless make. Nor does scrolling a bit to get to your results

https://adfontesmedia.com/federalist-bias-and-reliability/

I think we can point to specific choices and policies that made it suck. That’s probably more useful information since it can serve as a warning to others. I’ll start by reframing the question here:

“Which specific choices did Google make that ended up ruining a previously stellar product?” (Subtext being, what can we all learn NOT to do when we’re in similar positions facing similar choices)

This article is no different than the dozens of articles that have been posted about the dystopia that Google search results have become.

instead of being distracted by the shiny object of a few political examples and a source that some might feel conflicts with their priors, maybe consider speaking to its obvious conclusion that Google is no longer reliable or useful when doing even the simplest of searches.