Vast majority of these SEO abusers are monetized through google ads. For every advertisement dollar spent through google, google takes 30-50%. And 80% of Google's income is from internet ads.
I would be surprised if google's search quality would not deteriorate - they have very strong incentive for that.
I still get strange results from flaky websites that have strange TLDs and the content is literal garbage. Like just words mangled together. Ads on there are the worst and reach into malware territory. Results like these are on the first page. I have no explanation for it, but 100% of my searches for personal use are DDG or Bing now.
Vast majority of these SEO abusers are monetized through google ads. For every advertisement dollar spent through google, google takes 30-50%. And 80% of Google's income is from internet ads.
I would be surprised if google's search quality would not deteriorate - they have very strong incentive for that.