I've read the thread up to here, and I do think Google is to blame for some heavy-handedness and some rather tone-deaf spokespeople (not that Matt_Cutts ever identified himself as speaking for Google, though he acts like it). But I think the bigger point that everybody is missing is that the Internet has become awash in all sorts of information, "good" and "bad," well-curated and spammy, human- and machine-generated, white-hat and black-hat. Just because YOU post information, and post a blog article about how it is good information, doesn't make it so or not so to an objective observer.
Google is what it is: trying to sift through all that information algorithmically and using some forms of AI so it can extract what humans think is good information. I agree that a good forum that has good policies is getting hurt by some of google's actions, but it's the larger system, not Google. To make an analogy: almost everybody drives and everybody uses roads, but nobody should say: I'm a good driver or I don't drive, I've never been in an accident, therefore I cannot be in an accident. With all the information and intents behind such information on the Internet, and with google as the self-appointed traffic laws, there is still bound to be some collateral damage, sometimes because of how Google tries to deal with the dreck.
As an aside, one can view Google as a just one way of monetizing information on the Internet, competing and co-existing with many other ways. You can also view it as a giant AI algorithm that gets rewarded (advertising revenue) when it finds the good information that humans are looking for and defends itself against others who have other interests.
Google is what it is: trying to sift through all that information algorithmically and using some forms of AI so it can extract what humans think is good information. I agree that a good forum that has good policies is getting hurt by some of google's actions, but it's the larger system, not Google. To make an analogy: almost everybody drives and everybody uses roads, but nobody should say: I'm a good driver or I don't drive, I've never been in an accident, therefore I cannot be in an accident. With all the information and intents behind such information on the Internet, and with google as the self-appointed traffic laws, there is still bound to be some collateral damage, sometimes because of how Google tries to deal with the dreck.
As an aside, one can view Google as a just one way of monetizing information on the Internet, competing and co-existing with many other ways. You can also view it as a giant AI algorithm that gets rewarded (advertising revenue) when it finds the good information that humans are looking for and defends itself against others who have other interests.