Google did say they were going to crack down on links.
It’s really a stupid way to determine quality anymore, and they know it. They are trying to hold on to it though and apparently working on a crack down.
I would assume they are also working on alternative algos…
If you have a google webmaster account, they have started communicating a lot of things. I have received several warnings lately – they are going back to wanting very descriptive metas. They do display the pages you should add better metas to.
I think there is something big brewing again.