Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I realise the main blame fell on the newspapers for what was essentially cash for links, but a separate part of the PR push was sending flowers to bloggers who then blogged about it. I can see that this could be construed by Google to be a breach of their t&cs, but equally it could be a legitimate action by the blogger if they are giving an honest viewpoint. Is the Google Chrome "satchel" ad being unintentionally misleading? If it's all down to the intention that's a worryingly grey area to be stuck in, what do you think?

This is pretty much an opinion question, I was under the impression that footer links had been devalued almost to the point of uselessness, and if they weren't going to be of any real use to the users of the site why bother. I was speaking to a web developer though whose opinion I do largely trust who remains very pro footer links, and I was wondering what everyone else thought. Am I being too dismissive, or are footer links on the way out?