[paragraft]

I think the big thing that happened around that time that marked the sunset of the Golden Age of Google was Google Books (launched 2003) and critically the response. It was the last large, ambitious project of theirs that really aligned with the old "organise the world's information and make it useful" mission, and from Google's perspective was clearly a no-brainer Good Thing for the world.

And instead of the same enthusiastic reaction at large they had become used to, they got _hammered_ for it by publishers and dragged into court. I do wonder if that turned into a fundamental cultural inflection point for them.