It seems silly to me to get mad at Google for paying, what, ten thousand dollars in affiliate payouts, incentivizing cruddy posts, when they simultaneously collect (and pay out) billions for the ubiquitous AdSense ads which you find on sites which, charitably, span a wide range in terms of content quality.
I think the problem isn't that they're doing both of those things at the same time. The problem, instead, is that the third thing they're doing at the same time is issuing guidelines, (hopefully?) backed by their ranking algorithm, written specifically to combat this type of behavior.
If it were a free-for-all, sure, no problem. But Google doesn't want other parties doing this. Doing it themselves puts them in a position that's a little difficult to explain.
It seems silly to me to get mad at Google for paying, what, ten thousand dollars in affiliate payouts, incentivizing cruddy posts, when they simultaneously collect (and pay out) billions for the ubiquitous AdSense ads which you find on sites which, charitably, span a wide range in terms of content quality.