[rurp]

I don't think it's even in question that Google de-ranked blogs and other independent sites. I remember Eric Schmidt talking about this publicly back when he was running things, saying that they were intentionally up-ranking larger corporate sites. Google had been the main way that blogs got new readers, then Google took that traffic away. It's no wonder that ecosystem has mostly died off, and Google deserve most of the blame for why the public internet has become such a bland corporate-controlled environment.