Several political bloggers apparently got penalized in Google search results for accepting ads from a link farm. At Captain's Quarters blog it's funny to read the commenter's interpretation of why Google did this.

At that conservative blog, speculation is rife that Google is a company of leftists... Mostly due to reports that Googlers gave over $207k to the democrats in last year's election. HA! Google employees are probably much more liberal than conservative, but $207k in political donations is nothing! That was before they were all rich. Imagine how much they'd donate now...

What's interesting is how Google's ever-shifting algorithms and battles vs SERP spammers are starting to affect and be noticed by normal users. Whatever those users ascribe the changes to (e.g. political agendas), the perception that Google is arrogant, politically motivated, too powerful, etc. can't be helpful in the long run.

¶ 3/28/2005