I think Matt and Google are getting an unfair rap on this. Google provided a search engine that worked better than any other so people started using it. People are still using it because it's still better than the others. It's not a monopoly. You can use another search engine if you want to.
The site that emailed to get a link taken down employed an SEO agency to improve their rankings and they created a bunch of spammy links to try to manipulate Google into ranking that site higher than others that probably deserve to rank higher due to their content. If Google did nothing about it we would get some crappy search results.
Also, if you read what Matt Cutts is saying, it implies that if they only had a few unnatural links then they wouldn't have received a webmaster tools warning telling them they had spammy links. They got the warning because their link profile suggested that it was obvious they had been trying to manipulate rankings, not because they had one or two iffy ones.
It's likely that the site then blanket emailed anything and everything that they weren't sure about to get the links taken down. Is it Google's fault that this is how the site decided to deal with the warning? Should Google just make it really easy for them by saying, "OK you disavowed those crappy links, you're off the hook now"? If the consequences are so weak and short-lived, where is the deterrent effect? No, Google doesn't own the internet but they own Google and the site is just trying to provide users with the most relevant results to their searches.
Re, the nofollow aspect. Google didn't "force" sites into using the nofollow attribute by scaring them into thinking that their rankings would drop. Nofollow was in place before there was any notion that who you linked to could harm you. Sites like Wikipedia and others were only too happy to add nofollow to links because it put spammers off from crapifying their sites.
The site that emailed to get a link taken down employed an SEO agency to improve their rankings and they created a bunch of spammy links to try to manipulate Google into ranking that site higher than others that probably deserve to rank higher due to their content. If Google did nothing about it we would get some crappy search results.
Also, if you read what Matt Cutts is saying, it implies that if they only had a few unnatural links then they wouldn't have received a webmaster tools warning telling them they had spammy links. They got the warning because their link profile suggested that it was obvious they had been trying to manipulate rankings, not because they had one or two iffy ones.
It's likely that the site then blanket emailed anything and everything that they weren't sure about to get the links taken down. Is it Google's fault that this is how the site decided to deal with the warning? Should Google just make it really easy for them by saying, "OK you disavowed those crappy links, you're off the hook now"? If the consequences are so weak and short-lived, where is the deterrent effect? No, Google doesn't own the internet but they own Google and the site is just trying to provide users with the most relevant results to their searches.
Re, the nofollow aspect. Google didn't "force" sites into using the nofollow attribute by scaring them into thinking that their rankings would drop. Nofollow was in place before there was any notion that who you linked to could harm you. Sites like Wikipedia and others were only too happy to add nofollow to links because it put spammers off from crapifying their sites.