They exist only so you stay on Google’s page and don’t follow a link to another site.

That may be true, but I’d say in the neighborhood of 1/3 - 1/2 of my searches are answered by auto-compiled info cards or similar artifacts.

Just by way of example, my wife and I were casually researching cars lately, and one of the criteria is “does the damn thing fit in our garage??” Typing “Mazda CX-9 length” and having that specific info presented immediately is immensely preferable to clicking into edmonds.com and scrolling through an entire table of specifications.