I thought the same thing. The one big difference, though, is that ethereum will become far more centralized and easily controlled by outside forces, including governments. Bitcoin retains decentralization.

Exactly. For the lack of real applications, core devs are delving more and more into esoteric stuff, with unintended consequences: witness discounts, removing restrictions on witness size, etc. I view Taproot as over-engineering, but there's still more to come...