BeeDeeDubbleU - 3:44 pm on Oct 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

Regardless of your arbitrary opinion of a website, it still doesn't change the fact that in 99% of the cases an EMD is always related to the content of the website.

Precisely, and that's what makes this such a stupid move. They know that a massive amount of businesses created EMDs as a result of Google and the others using this a strong ranking signal and it still should be a strong ranking signal. After all, a whole industry was created out of EMD sales.

Allowing this to happen after so many years is wrong. To suddenly remove this knowing that many thousands of legitimate businesses will be damaged as a result is just plain arrogance.

I worry about where this will all end and I am glad that I am approaching retirement. Google really does now have way too much power.