"If you read the original post closely, it's clear that this is a site asking for a link to be removed--the quoted email isn't from Google."

Matt, this is beyond disingenuous. If Bing or Yahoo responded in the same way, I doubt we would hear a ringing endorsement from Google on the subject.

You've indicated in other comments that basically your algorithm is everyone else's problem to deal with. You can use whatever words you like, but the actions are what matter.

At this point, it sounds more as if Google is concerned with "being right" more so than "doing right".