This post comes courtesy of Metafilter. I could bash on about how, if I'm looking for something  interesting or  controversial when aimlessly browsing I go to Metafilter and not a search engine. I could draw a comparison between the effectiveness of Metafilter as a search engine for really cool stuff and the primacy of a certain search engine. Or how Metafilter does the job right first time most of the time, while the likes of BoingBoing et al show merely occasional flashes of brilliance when compared to the massively parallel user model of Mefi. But I won't, because they're all a bit tenuous, to be honest.
Instead, I'd like to point you toward a posting on Metafilter; if Google were optimised for Google. Click through the page, and it's possible to see how search engines have changed the physical appearance of the web. We're all aware to a certain extent of how external influences change the design and layout of sites, but I was stunned to see the sheer volume of cruft, crap and extra verbiage added to the page in the name of SEO.