For years there’s been a manual penalty in Google search results against the website I created that would - were the penalty not in place - let me afford to be

For years there’s been a manual penalty in Google search results against the website I created that would - were the penalty not in place - let me afford to be self-employed. It was put into place during Matt Cutts' tenure at Google - before his quiet exit from the company. I actually pressed him on the issue in a thread here on HN and he lied about it. Forget procedures, guidelines, terms of service. Individual Google employees can and do destroy businesses, with impunity, and with no accountability. It’s always difficult to distinguish incompetence from malice. But Google is the worst of all possible universes: both incompetent and malicious - and completely uncaring about that fact.