Ah yes, didn't look at the byline -- eek.

tl;dr: Facebook sees a threat and systematically attacks it. Beware.

Here's a broader article that goes into a lot more detail about failing to compete with Facebook. Also various HN threads go into details...

https://www.wordtracker.com/blog/search-news/long-form-post-from-wordtracker-googles-success-in-soci...