[Speculation] What if Google’s recent pissing in the faces of their customers by slashing PR ratings (and attacking people’s ability to make money) doesn’t actually have anything to do with network link practices or selling paid ad spots? What if it’s based around some subject matter or content which they are trying to select against in their informational ecosystem?

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time they pulled something like this, although the connection is only a tangential one. And censorship on this scale wouldn’t even need to be on behalf of a government: they could - theoretically - arbitrarily drop link valuation on sites featuring certain types of content which they find damaging to their corporate image. What would there be to stop them from doing that?