"Their crime was ranking highly in Google, while Google said what they were doing was OK." There's the letter of the law and there's the spirit of the law. EE

"Their crime was ranking highly in Google, while Google said what they were doing was OK." There's the letter of the law and there's the spirit of the law. EE may have been compliant with the letter of Google's law at the time, but if you'd asked Google and Google users specifically they would've told you it was sleazy/not ok. Google eventually understood the sleaziness and changed their policy to address this specifically. End users also understood the sleaziness and went elsewhere.