Google: Competitive keywords for the rich. Non-competitive ones for the poor.

Day after day, the SEO landscape is getting more challenging for businesses without a huge budget due to Google putting importance on backlinks. We used to think SEO helps us reduce marketing costs. Still, today it has become the other way around - doing social media marketing is much cheaper than allocating monthly budget on backlinks (guest posts, niche edits) to outrank a competitor or to be visible on search engines, notably Google. Will the trend continue to grow in the same direction, or will Google put an end to it?