[joe_the_user]

The thing with Google is, the search-based model for information finding itself is indeed what enables this but it's what enables the Internet itself. There is no index-based search engine that wouldn't be actively gamed by scammers. Scamming is so profitable that one can say 99% of the Internet "by flow" is fraud. And this results in Google being both the enabler of and the wall that stands against scamming. Any purely algorithmic approach to indexing obviously would be taken over. The problem of gaming scammers would exist whether you had Google or a competitive group of search engines. And this situation makes concentration natural since the engine that invests most in finding quality will return it most and so it will be preferred by consumers.

And yes, Google itself is degenerating. I'm not sure what the solution is. The Internet has incubated such an economy for fraud, I imagine waking up and the whole thing will hacked.