I hate it so much. So arbitrary and capricious. I would say this is currently the number one blocker for the web as a serious platform. And they're doing it on purpose.
The article was obviously horseshit -- and I hate google. But if your search for "running clothes" was getting replaced with "addidas running clothes" you would see clearly in the results. Degraded as it is, I still get results that include the specific words I searched in most situations. That type of replacement would be immediately and obviously apparent.
You standing on this system like it is worth defending is pathetic. You are lower than a worm if you can't see the inhumanity of the system and how defending it is anti-human. If I heard you say something like this in person you wouldn't do it again.