johnnie - 9:44 am on Oct 17, 2010 (gmt 0)

I think that part of this problem stems from the common misconception that outgoing links negatively affect the linking page's PageRank. While a minor part of internal link flow may be redirected outwards, I feel a solid outgoing link can only improve a site's thematic relevance (the ever elusive 'hub score'). It makes perfect sense for Google to actually reward linking, since a relevant outbound link can significantly improve user experience.