Well, I still remember times when 50% of google results weren’t ads.

Interestingly, Bing almost doesn’t display search ads, and the search results are becoming even better than Google. I haven’t had a need to use google for a few months now.

I wonder if adblockers have contributed to this. In theory we users can reward non-horrible advertisers by whitelisting their ads, but in practice we tend to block as much as possible. The remaining ad-viewing audience will be partly composed of people who are ethically opposed to adblocking or are held back by a lack of tech knowledge, but it will also be relatively insensitive to ads (both in the sense of being able to put up with a lot, and in the sense of requiring a lot to attract their attention).

I think it depends on the site. I remember early 00s where many download sites would have ads with a download button, or pop-ups that blasted sound like YOU JUST WON. Now I think that sorta thing has been normalized to even non shady sites. My primary use of ad blocker is so that I don't get random autoplaying videos.

It has gotten significantly worse.