Well the point of the story is building off the narrative that Google is using its power to suppress negative stories/think tank reports about Google. The arti

Well the point of the story is building off the narrative that Google is using its power to suppress negative stories/think tank reports about Google. The article doesn't really give context on what information the story that got pulled had, and just that headline of "penalising" sites that didn't add the feature is hard to judge properly without knowing exactly what was said. I can certainly imagine Google trying to sell how big Google+ was going to be, and how adding the +1 button would drive users to Forbes for engagement and conversations. In such a theoretical argument, missing out on this engagement would set Forbes lower on the search results, effectively penalizing them. To me, this would be very different than an explicit punishing of sites that did not adopt the feature, which is obviously an abuse of power.