The web changed when every kinda slimy business bro realized they could monetize gaming search results. No matter what your fantasy web looks like, be assured, people will game it to the point it's not what you intended.
If I take that viewpoint on everything I might as well live as a recluse in the woods and avoid people altogether. I have to believe that there are enough of us are out there that genuinely want to build better things for people.
The web, just like the real world isn’t static. Becoming and staying intellectually, emotionally and physically mobile may be the only long term strategy to avoid ending up in one or the other dystopia, sooner or later.
When rates of change were slower, you might only have to “move” once in your life, but with increasing rates of change in our human experience, staying nimble is arguably of ever increasing importance.
And my point is that there are probably a lot of those motivated people working on the problem today. You make it out as though we've arrived at this state by either lack of effort or competence by Google/Microsoft. My guess is that every time they change the algorithm, the spammers adapt too. That's inevitable and would be just as much of a challenge for your supposed utopia. If you have some secret they don't, there's certainly plenty of money to be made.
