Guinness has always sold beer in bottles without widgets. Not nearly as good as the beer they sell in cans or bottles with widgets.
As far as I know, nothing has changed.
Not true at all.
I am a home brewer and for a long time I preferred guinness bottles for my brew based on their appealing appearance. They were an extra pain because you had to get the plastic widget out of the bottle before you could sterilize it. I fabricated my own widget extraction tool out of a ham slicer knife and invented my own technique for getting the widget out.
NO, they only recently stopped using the widget in the bottles...like the last 2-3 years.