Ignoring the low level stuff, which I agree is not very impressive (except Detect Thoughts), several of these are pretty damn useful. Also there are more useful ones outside of the PHB, but leaving that aside for now:
FrankTrollman wrote:Detect Thoughts - Allows you to telepathically listen in on someone within 60 feet if they fail a save. Very importantly: not covert! By the rules, people do know they made a will save.
Not quite -
SRD wrote:A creature that successfully saves against a spell that has no obvious physical effects feels a hostile force or a tingle, but cannot deduce the exact nature of the attack.
You can scan to your heart's content if the save DC is good or you're using it against low-level people. Even they make a save once, that gives them no info, so you can probably get away with one success as long as you watch them carefully. And when you're using it for interrogation, it doesn't matter if they notice it.
Arcane Eye - Creates a temporary slow moving drone with a camera attached that lets you check out potential dangers around corners. You have never seen this spell cast.
Totally seen it cast, once the slot cost is minor. It's invisible, and even if someone sees it they get a lot less info than if they saw
you.
Scrying - Gives you teleport actionable intelligence about dudes, allowing for Scry and Die to be a thing.
Not only teleport-usable, but information gathering usable, especially if you can read lips. You can see people within 10' of the target, which means you can create a "chain of scrying" where by seeing one member of an group you eventually see every member. You know when they made a save, so you can make sure that not too many tingles are felt. Given that there are all kinds of magical shit going on in D&D worlds, "knowing one person made a save against something" is not usually enough to provoke a big response. Also, you can totally scry on animals such as mounts or pets, which have a low Will save and can't warn people even if they do succeed at some.
Contact Other Plane - DM gives you cryptic answers from demon lords. Also go crazy.
Not so good at first, but once you crank up your Int enough to safely contact deities (does not fall on a '1'), it's one of the best methods, because almost nothing can block it. Oh, you're shielded against all mortal scrying? Too bad that doesn't mean a shit to Boccob. One word answers aren't great, but there's no material cost so with a few days of downtime you can ask a bunch of questions and get almost any info.
Prying Eyes - Gives you a literal handful of slow, short range spotter drones.
It's not amazing, but it is useful for searching non-hostile areas quickly.
Telepathic Bond - Gives pretty decent radio communication to a small group of people for about two hours.
Or can be made permanent. Utilitarian, but useful in many cases.
Analyze Dweomer - Analyze a magical object you are physically holding.
Is identifying an item per level for no cost not useful? Also scans people.
True Seeing - Pierce all illusions and see things as they really are... out to 120 feet.
Yep, that's what it does. Negating all illusions isn't good enough for you?
Greater Arcane Sight - See magic auras out to 120 feet!
Knowing the entirety of an opponent's buffs isn't good enough for you either? You're harping on the limited range, but vision is just shitty like that in D&D. For instance, if you aren't a devil and it's nighttime, then an Imp can fly 130' above you and shit on you all night, and you can't do anything about it. Not an issue specific to Divination.
Greater Scrying - Do your scry and die setup much quicker. Largely meaningless unless your target has Detect Scrying and thus the ability to cast round/level buffs before scrying instead of after meaningfully impacts the amount of preparation time your assassination target has.
And it lasts 60x as long, which is good if you're doing actual information gathering with your scrying. And you can use it to communicate with people.
Discern Location - Find your car keys at unlimited distance.
Your car keys, the royal scepter you managed to brush your hand against once, a person in hiding who you have a belt buckle from ... all pretty much the same, I agree.
Greater Prying Eyes - create a small number of floating scout drones with advanced sensor arrays. You have never seen this spell cast.
I've seen it cast multiple times. Again, for the purpose of searching an area quickly and not having to worry about traps.
Foresight - Gives a bullshit small bonus (+2) to a bunch of defensive indices. It's an insight bonus so it stacks with a bunch of other shit. Appears in min/max builds because it's another thing you can have, but very obviously not worth a 9th level spell in any real sense.
And makes you always able to use Immediate actions, which is pretty important with Celerity. Also it gives you an action to respond to things before they happen, depending on how it's read.
None of these spells are in any way helpful to conquering the kingdom unless assassinating the king is part of your plan.
A lot of those sound very helpful to conquering a kingdom.
However, I can see where you're coming from in one way - a number of GMs are not going to have planned or want to figure out what various people in the setting are doing at any given time, and so they might stonewall the kind of "knowledge database" style information gathering that Divination is good at. And in that case, it's not doing much.
Although you could say the same thing about retro-divination like you mention in Shadowrun (which does exist in D&D, but as a psionic power) - if the GM doesn't feel like figuring out past histories of objects, they might just stonewall it.