How those ads are presented has changed tremendously over time:

<http://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2016/07/googl...>

60% of people cannot tell ads from organic search results:

<https://www.smartinsights.com/paid-search-marketing-ppc/paid...>

Indeed. Google is far from being a saint. The idea I'm disputing is that the conflict between organic results and ads is impossible to solve. Google solved it many years ago, but is now regressing from it.

Paid ads used to be displayed to the side of the results. Being displayed instead of the results isn't so much of a "compromise".

"instead" suggests that the actual results aren't there, which isn't true.

You just need to scroll a bit. Google needs to tread the balance to stay usable, otherwise people stop using it.

If the results are there, but not displayed, then whatever is displayed is being displayed instead of the results.

The results are displayed on the page, just a little bit below the ads.

If you have to scroll, they are not displayed. You seem to have a working definition of "display" which does not include making something visible, but that conflicts with every actual definition of the term.

That depends on the size of the screen then? On my 15" laptop screen if I google "buy s23", I see both ads and non-ads without scrolling.