As a publisher whose traffic and biz revenue has been heavily dependent on Google for 15 years, my sites were hit HARD by the Google's HCU last fall... I've seen a lot of chatter among my publishing colleagues that the update was Google effectively killing independent blogging as viable work.

...Which is remarkable because Google kinda validated the industry in the early '00s when they bought Blogger.com! Fascinating to watch this stuff evolve over the years...