May 2022: If you have noticed the traffic from your web assets plummeting or showing strange troughs and crests patterns, it is because Google is testing a 2-snippet and a 3-snippet results page.
3-Snippet
In the 3-snippet results page, Google shows three snippets from 3 websites, allowing the user to choose a context. The snippets are shorter - just one line.
It is labeled as "From the Web," like the good old 90s phrasing.
2-Snippet
For search phrases that Google is pretty certain about the context, the Search Engine is showing two information snippets - to mitigate the ambiguity of time-sensitive results.
From the two tests, it is clear that Google doesn't want a single entity to game the snippets. This also disincentivizes pursuing 'winner takes it all' phrases that are often the motivation for blackhat methods and hacks.