Not that I'd put it past them but do you have any evidence or is this just tinhat babble?
Joe - if I had evidence then the mystery of the Google Algorithm would no longer be a mystery. I based my comments on a fair bit of reading on the broader subject of Googles "interests" and how it is dealing with the likes of Facebook advertising, Microsofts 250mil per 1/4 loss on Bing in Europe alone over the past 18 months or so and why MS is willing to keep pouring it in, the +1 moves of recent times with the "stringent moral high ground" now apparently just a small deflection on a flat surface and so on.
Google is a money making advertising machine which happens also to be a search engine (great residence for an online advertising seller) that is continually under pressure to keep its shareholders happy. Google is about making money as it thinks it gives you the search result you wanted, in that order.
I fell foul of Google when I was green(er) behind the gills - now I am paying big time for it. The alternatives are way, way in the distance in not first place. Look at ALL of Googles Apps, the free ones (and the paid ones) like Analytics, Adsense, AdWords, Google Merchant, Blogger, Docs, Webmaster Tools and +1 for Ads - all are designed to steer the user to use more and more Google Advertising.and if Google was my business I would do exactly the same - it is $mart with a capital $.
I mentioned some parking sites as examples of why not to mess with the big G - I have 1200 sites at WhyPark - prior to Panda I was making a nice little earner for doing very little indeed. But alas, like just about all the others they use Chinese Authors and Yahoo ads - my traffic dropped off by 60-70% within 2 months of the Panda release and the earnings now would not buy a stamp to post this post - so how is WhyPark doing? ASK.com, as Google's largest ad farm has made drastic changes and "announcements" about its drive for quality content in it and 3 other major ad farm sites it owns - Google forgave them very quickly it seems. Whilst many have been beaten to a pulp Ask.com received the equivalent of Julia Gillard giving a naughty reporter a finger point and a stern word.
I have turned the full circle in some 2 years now, from being a proponent of alternatives to Google and spruking that they are not the be all and end all - I humbly eat my words. I should have listened back then to you Joe, and Snoopy and General and just about everyone else in this forum. But hey, they reckon the best way to learn something is to try it, stuff it up then do it right after that lesson.
As always - never short of a word (that's why I write a lot of my own stuff - when time permits
cheers,
Mike
p.s. short answer to your question ...... it is just tinhat babble
