Yeah my local grocery store is totally white hat as well. Like I said this is comparing apples and oranges. For every Amazon and Google there are literally tens of thousands of companies that fail. Do you know what is "survival bias"? Go read.
Not to mention that there is NO SUCH thing like White Hat (off page) SEO. You either link build (regardless of how exactly - any link that is unnatural is black hat) or you don't. If you build links in ANY way - thats black hat. Dont believe me? Let me quote Google guidelines for you:
"Any links intended to manipulate
PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s
Webmaster Guidelines."
Now tell me how exactly you are going to rank with "white hat" lets say gambling/forex/pharma/adult affiliate without building links?