It's possible that both are true at the same time: 1. Google doesn't really give a shit and will do the very least they think can get away with, 2. They have some people working on it out of the 27k engineers they have.
I'm not even sure how it's controversial, I assume you are biased and emotional as a Googler, but every company will do the very least possible to loosen their grip on the market.
I book flights with Google Flights and other options (Kayak, my credit card’s travel portal, airlines directly), and Google Flights is kind of mid. It’s annoying that Google pushes it to the #1 result for lots of searches that it shouldn’t be.
I guess it depends on what you look for. I haven't bought a flight in a while, but I just looked at kayak and google flights for comparison. Google flights is a much simpler, more direct UI, and it feels a lot more responsive. In particular, kayak violated one of my huge personal pet peeves: page content moving around while it's loading.
That said, the gap is a lot smaller than it used to be. There was a time in the past where google flights was light years ahead of priceline, kayak, etc. in bloat, bugginess, responsiveness, etc. That gap has shrank considerably and it's more a matter of preference today.
I don’t see what is better about google flights. Sometimes I get the cheapest price on the airline’s website and sometimes on Expedia. Google flights’ price is almost always the same as the airline website’s price.
I'm not even sure how it's controversial, I assume you are biased and emotional as a Googler, but every company will do the very least possible to loosen their grip on the market.