Can we blame Google a bit here too? They have set-up a system that people can game, and it causes tremendous collateral damage. Our site is under a constant barrage of fake accounts and content trying to generate links to other sites. Meanwhile, a competitor passed us in Google search results after getting 500,000 links over a week from a single domain in China. I hope slow, steady and honest wins, but it doesn't feel that way.
I don't think it's fair to blame google in these situations -- they dev. their algorithms to expect that sort of stuff, but I imagine a lot of it is tweaked daily. Keep in mind Google hires very intelligent people to deal with these problems: we have to expect that they're giving it their all to resolve them day by day.
Every scenario is going to be different. As for slow, steady & honest winning the race? I certainly hope so, but it's up to you to define where the finish line is. Being honorable & operating a business that doesn't do nefarious stuff for short-term gain is one of my end-goals.. and it might hurt in the interim :)
