Did Google ruin it, or did advesarial activity between Google's algorithm and SEO ruin it? The latter seems more likely because the incentives make sense, and also inevitable.
It was. Advertising is incompatible with accurate data retrieval/routing. We've also implemented "obligation to deindex". So providing an unbiased index of the web as she is is essentially (in the U.S.) verboten.
We are increasingly becoming blind. To me it looks as if this is done on purpose actually.