Remember, Google is quite large, and hence also inhomogenous. Some time ago the Chrome browser team did something that could be construed as a service-for-links

Remember, Google is quite large, and hence also inhomogenous. Some time ago the Chrome browser team did something that could be construed as a service-for-links campaign, an the PageRank team penalized Chrome for two weeks (if I recall correctly - commentary on this [0]). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3422386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3422386