[RawAlex]

The Google changes only really touch affiliates if they are doing nothing but pasting up the same galleries from the same sponsors, and adding nothing to them.

What Google will not say (because they risk anti-trust action) is that they spotted certain features of "content farms" that they can key on that will hurt a few selected companies. They aren't out there whacking all sorts of information sites, only certain types of "farms" that were created not to give information to users, but rather to attract Google traffic.

I don't think they whacked affiliates in the least - only a select few abusers who were really trying to take advantage.