Google is trash for a long time already. You get almost exclusively official sources and you have to click at least two or three pages in order to get to something less official. Basically, unless your query is very specific, getting independent websites in search results is already almost impossible.

Also, that Smidt guy told us this a long time ago already. It was something along the lines that search results should be a single result and always correct result and nothing else. He called the fact, that there even exist multiple results, a bug.

In short, that's what Google was always about. Mind, perception and reality control. From the very start. Even back then when they had that silly tagline "don't be evil". Woe to those who actually believed in it.