Honestly, funding a research team to develop a science ranking engine that was both being continually developed to thwart gaming and effectively independent of university and science-funding politics would be a truly excellent use of YCombinator's money.
The impact of Google doing this is, in financial terms, probably much larger than if the same type of approach would be applied in the academic situation. So if Google is allowed to do this, why can't we allow the same approach for research? Apparently, the system works quite well.