Are Apprenticeships like Google's the evolution of bootcamps? "Earn while you Learn"

Apprenticeships at top tier companies are fantastic. You'll find they are very competitive and in many cases bootcamp grads compete for the slots. So they aren't so much an evolution of bootcamps but step 2 after having some initial feet wet. Bootcamps are one way to do that but you can also self teach or take community college courses. The problem with bootcamps is as you said - Google takes like 10 people or whatever and there are 10,000 bootcamp grads a year. New DEI pressure from the government resulted in pull backs in a lot of apprenticeships programs making matters worse for bootcamp grads. So the TLDR: yes - aim for apprenticeships, but you might have to do some courses to even compete for them.