The whole controversy surrounding syndic8 and SEO has an interesting subtext to it. "Everyone" agrees that they crossed a line with their subdomain advertising - here's a typical post on it, and here's my earlier post, where I called it pagerank scamming. Jeff Barr weighed in with an apology this morning. The unasked questions are:

• What line did they cross?
• Who defined the line they crossed?
• What's the appropriate punishment for whatever line they crossed?

Before anyone gets all self righteous and claims that it's all too obvious what they did, consider - Google effectively de-listed them from the net, and did so unilaterally. Everyone cheered that - but imagine if it were Microsoft (or IBM back in the 80s) doing something similar - would you be as copacetic with it?

Here's the thing - "everyone" is up in arms about AutoLink (I found a bunch of "the sky is falling posts" on this just this morning). No one is the least bit worried about this raw display of power by Google. This whole thing has the feel of the mandatory self criticism practice that the Soviets and other communists used, and I find it troubling.