Why does Google have to buy big billboard ads at the bus stops to convince people to use Google search?

Did Google finally realize that despite being the best search engine, many of their results are still pretty shitty?

Or do they merely want to distract from the anti-FAANG (don't) be evil discussion?

They are scared shitless of being broken up by anti-monopoly laws.
If prosecutors can say "the defendant completely ruined hundreds of American analog ad platforms, putting millions of Americans out of a job", be it true or not, google will have a bad time in court.
So they are advertising just to be able to say "people use Google instead of bing because billboard ads are mag and the industry is healthy!"

Remember those google vs bing memes earlier this year? That. Despite being merely a silly joke, people are starting to realise google is giving obviously opinionated results, even compared to another huge corporate search engine like bing. And google needs to do something about it.

They're trying to buy up all the advertising space in your city, so any business that actually wants to run ads will have to turn to google...

Google hasn't been the best at searching for a while now. Technical searches are terrible on Google. I get better results from DDG (aka Bing). They were the best at one point, but they are letting their engine slip to pursue anti end user ends. They no longer care about best results for the user. They care about choosing how the end user thinks.

@Demolishun really? Maybe I should try DDG again then. Last time I used it, the search results sucked in comparison to Google.