If you Google the name of a UK car insurer with some likely keyword like 'claim' or 'accident', you get paid listing from people offering two 'services'. a) 'call connection', which means that you call their premium-rate number and they just put the call through to the right company's phone line while charging you per-minute. b) 'claim management', you fill out a form on their website, they submit it to the actual company's website, and take a percentage of your claim. Neither of these are illegal, Google has promised to not take ad money from the first type, but in practice don't remove ads fast enough to make it unviable.
Consumer-facing companies now, ludicrously, have to do their own SEO to make sure they appear top of search results for their own name, and some even pay Google for ads to themselves. But clicks are more valuable to scammers than to legit businesses, so the former can always outbid the latter.
When it comes to organic, everything is free, so you try whatever hacks the algorithms, from keyword stuffed content to link spam etc.
So as time goes on organic search results will actually get worse and worse, and paid will get better/stay the same.
It might not actually be google who is preferring paid search results, it's just inevitable from how the system is set up.