I could not have said that better myself. Thanks Bobby_Davro and jtoddv for having the guts to lay it out there.

Our site was accidentally removed from Google in May/June timeframe (I did nothing and it came back at the next update). However, the financial pain of the lack of traffic was immensely painful, and it made me realize the power that Google wields. This experience has caused me to look very closely at our site to make sure it was on the up & up and that no trickery was being used to decieve visitors or search engines.

We have competitors doing underhanded things. They are sitting pretty in this latest update and continue with their trends of trickery, and spam. I've reported it to Google several times to no avail.

Blatant deception, trickery, spam, and the "Google Haze" continues.

John