That experiment was halted because it didn't move the security metrics as much as they wanted. It is therefore very obvious that the conspiracy surrounding the motivation was ridiculous.
Perhaps, but it's one of the safest bets to make that huge multinationals with billions of private interests do things for profit, rather than for "the customers", "to change the world", and so on.
It takes a special kind of naivety to believe something like Google's early "Don't be evil" slogan.
Actions can have multiple independent influences. For example, aggressively doing searches around the URL bar is decent UI and provides valuable data for search engines. It’s such a central part of the interface that a lot of innovation and experimentation occurs around the search bar.