When is a site network to large for Google?

At what point do the google gods get angry

[drall]

After spending considerable time going trying to figure this out we could really use some feedback on this.

We have a large network (to us at least) of 10 websites that have been built up over the years and they are all interlinked due to the fact that they are all relevant to each other.

We typically build up a property then launch it once every year or so but have hesitated in doing this recently due to so many changes with Google.

Matt Cutts says if you have a few sites on one server or interlinked no biggy but if you have thousands, you have a problem.

My question is what if you have say a network of 20 or 30 really good sites and you interlink them like the large networks do because they are relevant to each other, does anyone have any idea of how many sites is just to many in Googles eyes? is 15 or 25 or 35 sites just to many.

Please keep in mind that these are real websites that have unique content and take almost a year each to make, not scraper junk or anything like that but true websites with staff assigned to each one.

Thanks in advance.

[skweb]

In our opinion (running a network like yours), natural interlinking gradually doesn't hurt - it actually helps. What hurts is when you try to manipulate the search engine rankings (e.g. very quickly put a lot of links to another website using the same anchor text).

Running a highly profitable content business (we truly believe that if you work for your visitor and even forget the spiders) we know that the less you worry about the search engines, the better off you would be. So if your reader can benefit from a link, just put it.