Sponsored links cover 1/3 or more of screen width. Also sometimes up to 6 sponsored-own links appear at top, covering half of the page. What you are left with is people who know exactly what they are looking for, what is sponsored and what is not. Are these recent changes? Doing well at se's won't help much in some industries anymore. Number one spot will look like number 7.
Some people don't even look at the sponsored links or look at them less often than the search results... But people that are less knowledgeable will see the sponsored links first and consider them part of the search results.
Remember G is a business. And business are for money. Personally I don't see how sponsored links affect the search result. It will be bad if the do not identified them as sponsor. But they do so clearly.
G is doing alot of business through sponsored ads and in the recent times it is trying to give maximum space to them.All the things are about money finally.
What's your problem - Sure Google is a business but you know what you're getting yourself in for and generally speaking so do the users. Sometimes it allows users to see relevant sites that wouldn't naturally list on the 1st page