New York Times and Time Magazine are buying paid links?
June 3, 2008
This makes you wonder where and when a line should ever be drawn. Once in a while someone gets outed (BMW) and then you see hundreds doing what Google frowns upon without ever being touched.
Why the New York Times and Time Magazine think they need to do this? Not sure. Probably some internet marketing guru told them it was a good idea.
Regardless, buying a link is buying link.
Seems like there are still quite a few services like free stats counter prospering in mighty ways selling better rankings in Google. 
Here are some examples with the links in the counter.
http://lojinhajota.blogspot.com/2008/04/o-nosso-conceito.html
http://eb1-praceta.blogspot.com/
http://algoqueexpresar.blogspot.com/
Mike this surprises me NONE - the big boys do everything that is frowned upon - MASSIVE reciprocal links, hiding links, selling links, buying links (as you pointed out)… they try to manipulate the search engines more than half the BHs out there.
I like to think that if it’s against Google’s guidelines, then the big boys are doing it -
The funny thing is that Google won’t do anything about it and, to be honest, I wouldn’t either. Business is business and those sites pay the Googler money in AdWords and make the Googler money off of AdSense.
If I was Google, I would however be cautious, and wondering, if I would be making as much money when the small websites are gone and the big boys no longer need to advertise as much - it’s a few years down the road but their putting up entrance barriers (for online businesses) left and right. When the word gets around that it’s too hard to succeed online - say good bye to new websites popping up.
they’re* putting up -
Jayson makes a good point. Big business is trying to take over the internet like they have the other traditional media outlets. This is just a symptom of the problem.
I have always thought that traditional media was missing the boat when it came to online audience acquisition. If a guy sitting in his bedroom can get a million people to his little blog doing these kinds of things why shouldn’t a big old newspaper do the same?