they might have changed a little more than his tie colour. Here’s a side by side picture from an interview:

Yep, very little of the main page is links anymore.

The article actually does make an interesting argument that the web is becoming a legacy format in favour of generative AI and social media interaction, and takes this as an example of that trend.

Clickbait headline. What Google did was add a new tab for web results (only) in their search page, similar to images and news.

I do find it interesting/funny that Google felt the need to actually provide this, as a sort of acknowledgement that their main search “results” page is so full of random info boxes and generated content that people can’t find actual links anymore.