Doesn't this break Google's own rule of 3 ads above the fold? Or do ads that are integrated well into the page not count?
It feels like there must be insane internal pressure to continue the double-digit percentage YoY gains in ad clicks.
This isn't adsense, so they don't really need to follow those rules (and wouldn't need to anyway because they are the rulemakers).
But even aside from that, in a way they just made a current "block" of ads larger.
"This algorithmic change...affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page."
If you equate "the organic results" with "original content", the irony is thick.
Yet I can see the other side of the coin -- that they are right to downrank others for this (or at least: that it is a useful heuristic for judging other websites), even while at the same time they are right to frontload ads on their own results pages. Their best research probably suggests they should lay it out this way, as has been said elsewhere in the discussion.
Nevertheless, I personally downranked Google Search about 6 years ago, when I could see how far it was already from any idealized concept I had of it, as a (reliable, objective) library-style index search program for internet pages, which would just report back things honestly, like a database query.