You're confusing cynicism with paranoia. A cynic would think that Google has lost faith in its algorithm and is taking to manually blocking spammy sites; a paranoid would think that Google plans to have websites pay to be included in search, and is retaliating against hosts that don't use Google Analytics or Adwords.
Not really having a dog in the hunt for Google page ranks, it's not really paranoia for me. It's not really cynicism either given that it is a natural extension of Google's basic revenue model, i.e. showing links to pages in exchange for payment. I just added the tag to keep the post consistent with implicit HN style guidelines.
There is nothing sacred about the blue text links, and with "personalization" they don't reflect an objective page ranking, but a subjective ranking based on speculation about what one is most likely to click.
It is only in the minds of consumers of Google's search services that a wall between search results and advertising exists. With personalization, the same algorithms are applied to both.
