As a counterpoint, I feel like Google's results are far better than they used to be. What's more, I find Google ridiculously good for technical queries compared to the competition, and I'm often surprised at how Google will know the intent behind my search even if my query is vague. For example "cat pipe" gives me a bunch of answers related to the shell (as well as some pictures of cats dressed like Sherlock Holmes). They still aren't perfect, but most of the time the result I want is in the first page of the first query.

Twenty years ago, I had an actual advantage over others due to knowing how to write a good query and find the appropriate result (Google-fu). Nowadays that skill is largely obsolete.

This site cloning has always been an issue. Before the current iteration of SO/GH SEO clone farms, you had sites doing the same thing with expertsexchange and cloned forum pages. I do find it odd that Google won't just block the big ones, but perhaps they internally don't like doing one off hacks and prefer to find a cleaner algorithmic solution?