I would say its not really on the priority list for one of the biggest companies in world...... things like the cool google street...would be more interesting....
Im also happy to see that google dont do manual changes and all results are robots based and google search engine follows the seo rules for itself
Maybe google don't have enough back links or havn't optimized their meta tags, to allow their own software to know that they are number 1
Google no longer will need to compete for SERP's there majority of traffic comes from direct requests some many people now know if they want a search engine use google!
Maybe to them, altavista is the weakest competitor and seen less likely as a threat to their dominance.
True, "at least not here", as you pointed out. At least for this term, it's obvious Google is not gaming the system in their own favor.
Google needs few more backlinks to be on top for that specific keyword. Google fails at search engine term.