On Quora, the former owner of eHow recently wrote[1] that when he handed over the keys to the people who bought the site, it had an excellent quality of content. This gave it a good 'credibility' on Google. When it was taken over, it was turned into a content farm, but the atrophy of credibility is possibly to disproportional to the spam parameter variable, which leaves it in Google's results. At least according to one of his listed explanations.
I recall about.com as a decent site a while ago, but I believe it was acquired a while ago by ... Yahoo!? Go figure.
I think that might be what makes it so complicated.
[1]: http://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Google-push-down-low-quality...