But that's exactly what everyone is saying and the OP was trying to get at. The Google Search before this WASN'T broken with this 'imperfect product' like it is now. It worked really well and that's why it became #1.
You guys wouldn't have to do all this social rigging if you hadn't broken the web's tried-and-true link graph in the first place by making sites' feel like they had to 'hoard' pagerank and link-condom every outgoing link citation with a no-follow flag.
Unintended consequences for sure, as no-follow was well-intentioned and designed to help with blog comment spam, but unintended consequences can be a bugger. The result is still sad.
I'm sure there's no rolling back now to the 'old' google with 10 blue links, but I sure miss it.