Learning_Curve - 7:09 am on Sep 30, 2002 (gmt 0)

Folks, I can tell you for a fact that keyword-in-URL-domains I have were not impacted at all. - Beachboy

That sugggests it may have been a devaluing of their internal links. Or perhaps more likely since they dropped out of sight, Google lowered the threshold on something which caused this particular network of keyword-in-URL-domains to have their internal links disallowed altogether.