What actually changed
Reviews got stricter on store quality: contact details, policies, delivery expectations, price accuracy. The stores that fail are the ones built from a template in an afternoon.
What did not change
Reselling is still explicitly allowed. Search, Demand Gen and YouTube still work with no Merchant Center at all. Margin still decides whether any of it is viable.
What works now
- A store that looks like a business, because Google checks.
- Honest shipping times, stated before checkout.
- Product data written for how people search, not how the supplier exported it.
- Margin that can carry a click.
"Dropshipping is dead" usually means "the version that required no work is dead". That version was always going to be.