I think it is a new tweak / so yes it is a new algo, but I dont agree with the penalties …
Anchor text is rumored to be one thing google is considering, but I DO NOT believe this at all !!! It would be too easy for your competitors to directly affect your site.
Say your site is about roulette, well I could add a link to your site on all my sites with your target keywords in the anchor text and theoretically google would send you to the back of the line.
Google has always stated it is NOT possible for other sites to affect others sites.
I still think google has studied/researched competitive terms via adword buys and has created a search database of these terms to remove 70% + of the commericial/affilliate sites. Thus you see lots of amazons, google/dmoz directory, aol user pages, etc etc