"I don't think it requires any assumptions about Cutts's ambitions, but rather about how much effort it would take an annoyed spammer/black-hat to point some of their tools at the highly visible source of their frustrations."
highly visible only in SEO circles. The rest of the world could hardly care less. It certainly wouldn't make any mainstream news bulletin.
"I think history generally shows that staying one step ahead of criminals/spammers/up-to-no-gooders is a never-ending struggle that does not tend towards positive resolution."
Google are not one step ahead, they are always one step behind, reacting to the next thing. One step ahead is dealing with a problem before it even becomes a problem - in chess they call it prophylaxis - defending before you need to defend.
History generally shows bad things prevailing by people sitting back and doing nothing.
What Google have done with spammy link penalties is to change the game SEOers are playing. It's a classic advice of if you can't win this game, change the game. (Similar to Honduras' World Cup football efforts: if you can't beat 11 men, beat 10).
highly visible only in SEO circles. The rest of the world could hardly care less. It certainly wouldn't make any mainstream news bulletin.
"I think history generally shows that staying one step ahead of criminals/spammers/up-to-no-gooders is a never-ending struggle that does not tend towards positive resolution."
Google are not one step ahead, they are always one step behind, reacting to the next thing. One step ahead is dealing with a problem before it even becomes a problem - in chess they call it prophylaxis - defending before you need to defend.
History generally shows bad things prevailing by people sitting back and doing nothing.
What Google have done with spammy link penalties is to change the game SEOers are playing. It's a classic advice of if you can't win this game, change the game. (Similar to Honduras' World Cup football efforts: if you can't beat 11 men, beat 10).