What you are saying sounds like hyperbole, but all it takes is for the management within google to blindly chase metrics and they end up doing exactly that.
That's the point - willingly saying that they promote spam sites to milk ad revenue could land them in antitrust trouble. But all they have to so is merely not do anything that would downrank said spam sites, and the outcome is exactly the same yet they are now legally in the clear and can just blame incompetence for the (totally predictable) outcome.