Sgt_Kickaxe - 7:39 pm on Jun 6, 2011 (gmt 0)

Hard to say but I highly doubt Google needed anything postrank had, besides the talent. It seems to be a strategical move to remove a potential competitor to Google's bread and butter(rankings) and eliminate the threat of a competitor buying the talent first.

Who knows, I just don't see a practical use, yet. Google may also be hedging their data gathering avenues a little further. I wonder if the fallout from Panda had any impact on that, a whole lot of annoyed webmasters might have caused the removal of anything google from a lot of places...