Can someone who has experience in a Google Product or UX team explain how these decisions get made?

If i create a folder and share it with others, why would you want to deprecate the ability to view the folder in their own desktop Google Drive folders? Instead it's replaced with Add a Shortcut, which for me on Desktop is not very useful.

Are they intentionally doing this to try and get me to use their browser based Explorer? But I see now advantages in doing so, either for myself or for Google.

Genuinely baffled. Many others have similar experiences too i'm sure. I'm still hurting over the removal of searching for Forum posts.