Google is Broken

Actually it's flawed rather than Google is broken but hey!:- if I'd called this page "Google is Flawed" who'd be here to read it?
I think several years ago it was comparatively easy to spam your way to the top of Google for a competitive keyword or phrase. You could simply use on-page spam and, where no-one else was using it, you could be at or near the top in short order. Where someone was using it, you had a variety of other spams available. You could use hidden text spam, or comment spam, or any of the other varieties of on-page spam plus, of course, you could utilise off-page spam like guest book and forum spam. Sites getting to the top using those techniques, if they had sufficient merit (and please note, I'm not specifically referring to sites without any real merit, many spammed sites also contain a great deal of pertinent content) could then attract enough inbound links from sources of merit to keep them there despite Google's eventual and (supposedly) increasing bids to rid the index of spammed and irrelevant content.
You can't get away with that now. It seems there's all kinds of filters in place to stop new sites from ranking due to spamming of many kinds.
This leaves us with a difficult situation. How do you change the order at the top of the rankings? Sites that used spam techniques to get to the no.1 position years ago, before Google got wise to spam methods, are arguably the same sites that are there now. Worse, from our point of view, is that unless this situation is addressed they'll probably still be there in ten years time.
In many cases, of course, it doesn't matter that the sites were spammed to the top. They were good sites then and they're good sites now. They maintain their rank on merit and good luck to them. The drawback to this scenario is that sites coming along these days with much better quality information have no way of being found through the search engines. Even if word spreads about them like wildfire via word of mouth and all kinds of related sites link to them (I exclude Teoma from this observation, for obvious reasons), Google simply won't accept this and will include the links into its index at a rate it feels is appropriate. So Google would now seem to be imposing its own version of reality, a faux index, upon search users. An index, not of what is actually out there, but an index of what Google feels you may be permitted to see of what's out there.
Users will still come away liking Google, of course. They'll have found a useful site on the subject they were inquiring about and come away satisfied that they found what they were looking for. In many cases, though, arguably they won't, as it'll be buried in the rankings somewhere where they'll never know to look for it. They won't know that though, because they'll have had a Good Search Experience,

I have to say that this situation affects my seo business adversely. People looking for search engine optimisation will naturally look for a company that's at the top of the rankings on the basis that if they're in that position then they must know what they're doing. Many would say it is nearer the truth to suggest that they knew what they were doing some years ago when the circumstances they found themselves in were greatly different from the way they are now.
Many would say that the people at the top rankings for the optimisation key phrases are there because they achieved top ranking by what would be regarded as spamming today and they survive there because due to their visibility they went on to get inbound links of genuine merit. Which means anyone trying to ascend the greasy pole after them has no real chance - having climbed the ladder, they pulled it up after them. The continuing existence of companies who merrily take money for non-existent services like multiple monthly resubmissions to dozens of non-existent engines at the top of the rankings would seem to be fine and dandy by Google who I imagine are perfectly happy for you to come away from the seo experience with nothing but a bad taste in your mouth and an empty wallet.
And that's just the problems I have with it on a personal level. Google is busily indexing libraries. It seems hell-bent upon becoming the contemporary equivalent to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Deep Thought, the computer that you turned to for answers to everything. Only, you don't actually get the answers to everything, you get instead the Good Search Experience so you just think you had a good time.
Really, though, you didn't drink from the fount of knowledge at all.
You just had a tasty (mmmm!) shake, so you thought you did. Google is search's answer to monosodium glutamate. It tastes good and enough of it will fill you up but a steady diet of it isn't healthy or nutritious.