Somewhat related, a thing I found suspicious, though not surprising, the last time I tried it:

Try Googling for how to block all Google Analytics and related services in your Hosts file.

Does it seem harder to find a simple list of IP addresses + instructions than it should be?

While Google Search results quality has gone down across the board in the last 3 or so years, it seemingly tries particularly hard to pretend it doesn’t understand what you mean with queries like these.

https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Apart from adware and malware it offers to block url's falling into other categories like fakenews, social, gambling, and porn.