So Goog tried unsuccessfully to tamp down on the content farmers like Demand Media and eHow. They did however get rid of one nuisance in Mahalo. This post by Aaron Wall at SEO Book pretty much sums up the situation http://www.seobook.com/google-kills-ehows-competitors
The interesting part about this is that in a weird way Goog needs content on all subjects so that it can offer a full index. Even if that content is low quality it's better than nothing. To avoid the "share cropper"...