SEO, AOL, and Huffington Post (or ALO,HuffPo, HufPo.....)

I recently read this very interesting article in Slate. As we are all now on our way to mastering SEO, this article brings up some interesting thoughts on the ways social media is changing the whole game. How many of you use a search engine to find out about news? Or do you just stumble across an article posted by a friend on Facebook (or hey, even stumble upon it on StumbleUpon)? As a Slate contributor stated, "Optimizing for Google results is a little like going out and buying the best VCR on the market." Since many more people are using different outlets to find news stories, how useful is SEO becoming for online news? Additionally, as Google is able to update its algorithm to catch these tactics that Huffington Post clearly takes use of how will this effect the AOL/HuffPo merger? SEO and Google seem to be a constantly evolving game, and it will be interesting to see where it takes us in the future.