I agree and so wonder how they can justify dropping so much money on something people don't want, expect for free, and burns through resources like crazy
Easy. Google doesn’t sell search. They sell ads and consumer data. The longer you spend searching, the more they make from both. The ideal scenario for them is to give search results that feel helpful enough that you keep coming back, but are actually so useless that you never find a link that takes you away from the search results for good.
That is actually a rather simple question: Google is sure that customers have nowhere to go (and 99% will definitely stay even if Google start installing anal probes) so people will cope with whatever Google may force upon people.