But in hindsight, this was a ploy from them to try and upsell AMP, which was in a lot of cases heavier than non-AMP websites, and it was a means to keep people inside of their ecosystem - and inside of their advertising network, because not all websites Google linked to had Google adverts on it.

They've given up on AMP. They've given up on improving search results quality. Dare I say they've given up on improving the web? I mean they're still putting some money into Chrome and HTTP/3 and the like.