> I'm surprised of the negativity towards this action
I'm not. This site is filled with grey-hat folks who would do anything to make a buck on the web. I mean, it's a forum hosted by/affiliated with a VC firm, and look at the comments here. A bunch of people angry that google would dare do this, because they might/will be targeted. People were also pissed when Google stopped using meta keywords, and when they stopped reading text that was made invisible in CSS, and really any grey- or black-hat way to get more visitors/ad impressions.
I'm not. This site is filled with grey-hat folks who would do anything to make a buck on the web. I mean, it's a forum hosted by/affiliated with a VC firm, and look at the comments here. A bunch of people angry that google would dare do this, because they might/will be targeted. People were also pissed when Google stopped using meta keywords, and when they stopped reading text that was made invisible in CSS, and really any grey- or black-hat way to get more visitors/ad impressions.