Agreed; but certainly the red line is sites which some people believe are scum and others believe are holy (thepiratebay, fox news, RT, DDGs direct competitors).

If anything this story/non-story has taught us is, there still exists potential cursed product changes which can sink large internet phenomena, like Digg was sunk.

Manipulation in this context means modifying the results after the search algorithm ranks the relevant results for the query. A good recent example of this on Google was all during March Madness, any searches for "NCAA tournament schedule, "March Madness schedule" etc. would deliver the women's basketball tournament schedule (and results) above the men's, despite all of the interest being around the men's games.

Google would say this was a noble thing, hoping to remind people that women's basketball exists, knowing how many queries were pouring in non-stop to find out what time a specific men's game was on.

That is manipulation. You see the same "noble lies" surrounding political, news, & covid related searches as well.