In a way I agree with those who claim that Google throttles your progress. Over the years I've seen it over and over again. As an example, my search console shows that whenever it starts going up, at some point, their algo brings it down. There's no real reason for it to go down, except it's all automated and done to throttle your progress.
If they make organic results varying and unpredictable, it is hard for a business to rely on them. That pushes some businesses to AdWords which makes Google money. AdWords tends to produce more consistent results and it also seems to reward higher spending with better results. But my experience is in very niche-y B2B technology solutions, so keep that in mind.
You're 100% right, it's all about their ever-insatiable bottom line, even though you could've had all sorts of traffic if a more reliable company ran the show.