Google obviously does a pretty good job ranking web pages and fighting spam as do the other engines. I'm always amazed they can return any results. Unfortunately search engines are also businesses. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it's unfortunate in that sometimes they don't have the incentive to make the results better for us. They do that only if it also aligns with their bottom line.

Google through their PageRank algorithm created a mass link economy online. Because of that we get people doing anything for links including spamming forums like ours. I think the use of links is a good metric for determining which pages to show in results, but Google and others could do a better job. For example how many spam sites are running AdSense. Wouldn't it seem like Google could easily get rid of all those sites and clean up tons of spam? Of course Google makes a ton of money from those spamsense sites, which probably explains their continued existence.

When you think about Google allowing those sites to exist it makes me feel less angry toward someone using black hat techniques that are outside search engine guidelines. It seems hypocritical for Google to say one is bad, while allowing the other to exist.