I copy here what I wrote in another thread, so no one will blame me for hijacking this thread:
Some statements of Google. Please read carefully:
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Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know.We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.
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Source: Why should I report paid links to Google?
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Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results.
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Source: Link schemes
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Many people who work on ranking at search engines think that selling links can lower the quality of links on the web. If you want to buy or sell a link purely for visitors or traffic and not for search engines, a simple method exists to do so (the nofollow attribute). Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.
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Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Information about buying and selling links that pass PageRank
Reading all the above, I do not see anything unfair from the part of Google. It is a fair and an ethical requirement to protect the webmasters from spamindexers or black hat SEOs, and the searchers from manipulated and irrelevant search results, and above all that to improve their search engine quality.
I have observe this topic for a while, and I have noticed that they hit the PageRank of the pages where bought or sold links have been found, but reading the bolded in red marked phrases, whole site can be negatively affected in terms of ranking results.
I am not a fan of anyone, except of myself
but still I think Mr. Cutts wrote something which this time I fully agree with him:
Selling links that pass PageRank
After reading the above, I do not think there is any space left to blame Google for anything. If you want to hide links, just do. But do it clever enough that you can pass the
PR. If you do that, you must know that you are already wearing a
BLACK HAT!!! You are not doing anything else than cloaking or whatever you want to call it. to manipulate the search results! I am against such dirty practices and I reported several sites already to Google.
Who's next please?
JUST MY LAST FEW DOLLARS...