While everyone who owns a small empire of hubs on hubpages is totally freaking out, charging that Google is essentially replacing "good" content for "bad", there is a small group of people who are actually benefiting from the change- those of us who actually own websites.
You see, for the longest time, us webmasters had to work really hard to compete out of the box with the likes of ezinearticles and hubpages. In fact, part of the allure of hubpages was that if you wrote an article for a niche there, it would get indexed quick and could rank very quickly with few to no backlinks based on the authority that google was giving to the website. Contrast that with the other option; actually building a site, getting links and then waiting for the shoe to drop for your rankings to appear. In some cases, you could be waiting for months for this to happen, while your site is building trust.
All the while, a marketer could write a 350 word article, submit it to EZA or hubpages and be able to see results in as little as a couple days time. Of course, the trade out was a share in traffic revenue but that is another discussion for another time.
When the farmer's update happened, and suddenly those web2.0 properties dropped out of site, there were spots which were replaced by real websites who actually covered more than simply a page or two of relevant content. These webmasters have experienced up to double the traffic that they were averaging just a week ago. So, while the masses are crying over the change, many webmasters are rejoicing in it.
Another unlikely group of "Winners" appear to be scraper sites that cover tight niches. It appears that removing many of these web 2.0 properties has created a vacuum in which there really is little to no relevant content for the conversation. Rather than simply allow these web2.0 properties to retain their rankings though, scraper websites have appeared. GeorgR, from the warrior forum, created a thread highlighting this & recommending that scraper sites were "in". I personally think that his view is a bit flawed though, although there is definitely an opportunity for the taking.....rather than building a scraper website, which probably will have no traction, why not build a website to fill that hole in the niche?
At any rate, while it is easy to accuse Google of mucking incomes up and taking away legitimate content sources...while it is easy to think of conspiracy theories of how google is in bed with ehow, amazon, and every other big brand...while it is easy to blame google for spoiling a good thing for the common man, the winners that no one is really talking about are the webmasters who didn't take the shortcut for quick rankings but instead actually built their own websites.