What I keep seeing: $ $ $ $ $

Also I'm sure the designs are absolutely as humanly possible adapted to perfectly achieve their goal. Too much money, people, and time involved for this not to be the case.

And the goal was never ease of use, that doesn't bring in any more money when you have a monopoly. Engagement & forced ads do.
(By 'forced ads' in this case I do not mean directly advertising a specific product, but forcing you to pause your thoughts to specifically and consciously think about Google making the name/brand ever more part of your actual life and as such its shitty behaviour gets normalised, even trusted - thats just how our brains work even when we think otherwise ... and I hope we all think of Google as a curse on humanity.)