However... artificially ranking their own links, ranking that isn't objective, is deadly to the utility of their search, and to their brand. In the past, google products have seemed to rank highly, but google claimed this was their natural rank. What is the evidence against them now?I think the notion of objectivity in search is a fallacy, and I would hesitate to characterize the addition of social search as artificial inflation, at least not any more artificial than any other part of the algorithm. The fact is: Google has more information about how to rank G+ profiles than any other profiles. That extra information adds google juice. Yes, other social networking profiles are indexed and ranked, but Google doesn't have the appropriate extra information on them that it does wrt G+.
This doesn't seem particularly hard to understand, and I'm not sure how the focusontheuser.org bookmarklet illuminates the issue. I agree that the G+ profiles are probably given too much weight, and that's probably for two reasons: 1. It's brand new and requires more data for calibration; 2. It props up G+ as a product.
From Google's perspective, even if search quality is negatively impacted in the short term while they calibrate and funnel users into G+, as long as in the long term search quality is bolstered by the additional subsequent data, it's a win.