Not sure if it was the GP's point, but it seems incredibly naive to think that the search algorithm itself is such that someone can just go in and "look" at it

Not sure if it was the GP's point, but it seems incredibly naive to think that the search algorithm itself is such that someone can just go in and "look" at it and gain any meaningful understanding. Even assuming Google is guilty of outright manipulation there's never going to be a smoking gun of "if(website == google) rank = rank +1, it is going to be an abstract machine learning algorithm with hundreds of inputs and dozens of outputs, all themselves the results of complex statistical properties gleaned from the web. There would be zero insight available to any mere mortal who might gain access to the code driving it.