How dare they try to improve their search results, company value, etc.?
Those codes can be handy for those starting up, but I don't think any of them work for existing advertisers.
I did use a Bing freebie, though, for my new site....
Looks like Penguin was the later one, being in April of 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Penguin
According to those write ups and my own experiences (in both search results and my own sites), they have been improving. There was/is entirely too much black hat seo, link stuffing, scraper sites, etc.
Sometimes big is better - sometimes not. I think even a big company like goog knows that if they do the wrong thing, some startup is willing and able to eat their lunch.