bobmark - 5:32 pm on Sep 28, 2002 (gmt 0)

David,
ignoring your comments on the thread title or some of the inflammatory statements made here, your experience does not invalidate the growing collective assessment.
I, for one, don't believe this was some Google conspiricy to damage the serp of specific sites or site categories. What I do believe is it was a shotgun approach to fix a specific problem (and I do realize Google operates under tremendous time constraints) that, perhaps in your category, was successful but in many more had a disastrous effect.
What I see is that the largest sites were untouched; those in the medium to big category were hit very hard - especially content rich, honest sites with a reasonable number of related links - and tiny sites benefitted by spaces opened up by the plummeting serps of the medium sites.
If it was just my site you could say it is sour grapes, but I see the same thing with 6 of my competitors who were formerly top 10: all good sites, some better than mine.