Well, since you work at Google, I'll keep walking on egg shells... Please don't kill me all powerful Google! :-P
In all seriousness, I liked the Google of 5 years ago that temporarily banned BMW better than the Google of today. I wish that the rules were applied for big and small brands in exactly the same way -- but it doesn't seem they are. When BMW was blacklisted I was impressed -- but this stiff punishment hasn't seemed to happen for JCPenny or Demand Media in the same way it has been applied to smaller businesses.
Another example: these are clearly paid links: http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/17/thank-you-techcrunch-sponso... - if small time bloggers try shit like this they get shut down, but this is TechCrunch, so it slides. I think this shows how there seem to be two sets of rules, one for the established and one for the startup.
Google cares about "paid links" in the sense that they don't want people to use their pagerank for monetary gain. This is clearly not TechCrunch's intent. Similarly, tiny conferences like http://www.alohaonrails.com/ do the same thing, and don't get shut down. I don't see the double standard in that case.
Intent shouldn't factor into Google's algorithm as that's a thin line even Google can't accurately toe without getting it very wrong. Just because these links are a by-product of advertising with a website doesn't make them anything but paid links. I didn't look but those links should be no-followed, and if they aren't you'd be crazy to assume those advertisers are gaining nothing (rank) from them.
In all seriousness, I liked the Google of 5 years ago that temporarily banned BMW better than the Google of today. I wish that the rules were applied for big and small brands in exactly the same way -- but it doesn't seem they are. When BMW was blacklisted I was impressed -- but this stiff punishment hasn't seemed to happen for JCPenny or Demand Media in the same way it has been applied to smaller businesses.
Another example: these are clearly paid links: http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/17/thank-you-techcrunch-sponso... - if small time bloggers try shit like this they get shut down, but this is TechCrunch, so it slides. I think this shows how there seem to be two sets of rules, one for the established and one for the startup.