Not sure how Google views them but I noticed that on some computers the target blank would give a popup warning when clicked.
It shows you vote for that site but don't want to got at booth and cast vote; you stay at home No penalty so far known.
I don't think its harmful. But Google can penalizes anything and everything then think is not good so cant say
Somehow lol, but google started to terrorize people these days. People are scared to death about GPenalty. I Speculate people will start asking "Will google penalize me if I use letter "G" in my domain?" very soon To the OP: I have uyet to see any kind of penalty for using Target = _blank. its very innocent practice. unless you have something very evil in your mind you'll be safe. However dont try target=_blank with adsense ads (Means clicking on adsense will launch a new window) that is against Adsense policy.
Google Paranoia This obviously hints that Google has too much control over the internet. I think Target="_blank" is okay, you will see many talks on the internet if that's not okay.
I very much doubt it - I guess by some logic it counts as less of a 'vote' if you don't want your visitors to leave your page, but I doubt they'd value links like that any less in reality.