Google & Paid Links

There has been a lot of talk recently about Google discounting the effect of paid links - they've even setup a tool for people to report websites that are buying or selling paid links. I guess it's time to get out the bowling shoes and knock down some competition.

A few thoughts on this: first of all, this is a war that Google will never win, like the US's war on drugs. Google will never be able to discern which websites are truly buying or selling links unless the websites selling the links prominently offer paid links to webmasters. I still believe that high quality paid directories will still provide website owners with benefits - you're not paying for a link, you're paying for a human to thoroughly review your website. I think these directories will play a role to help Google weed out the poor websites, and thus any PageRank received from these directories will be passed without discount. Lastly, if I were to contact website XYZ and ask them if I can buy a link on their website, how would Google ever know? Good luck, Google.