Absolutely, Yahoo were involved in that white paper (as pointed out to me a while back). Google speak of domain trust and trust factor etc when all it is , is a value. Once again people have gotten all hung up on names, rather than affect.

What is domain authority? (OK I know all about HITS, but am not speaking particularly about authority in that respect). Because that is another phrase that could be considered the same as trust rank. Google also bought the Hilltop algo in 2003, that could be another way of indicating some form of trust.

As for Google doing away with PR and replacing it with the trust factor/trustrank/poopy rank (call it what you like), well that is plain nuts.

Google will not (IMO) be getting rid of the silly green bar anytime soon.

And again as Dave says, and to misquote Oscar Wilde with regard reciprocal linking being dead 'rumours of its death are greatly exaggerated' it makes ABSOLUTE LOGICAL SENSE that two site on the same subject might cite each other, why would a search algo punish this or devalue it?

For sure shotgun linking and shotgun reciprocal linking has been devalued, but people are confusing cause and effect IMO.