Read an interesting blog post last night about Youtube and cloaking. http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/index.php/youtube-is-cloaking-so-why-cant-i/
Yeah - national sites always do a bunch of shady shiv. The Googler is definitely not the company it claims to be and someone with a big enough microphone will eventually oust them.
It was not my intention to make it appear like those are considered "legitimate" by Google per se. At least I'm not ready to say that yet. It is however trying to prompt some form of response from Google about why this is ok for them to do, and not for anyone else. Or for that matter, if it is ok for others. Thanks to my readers, I've been made aware that some sites(like the new york times) have been given a green light to go ahead and cloak as well. Another commenter said that AOL Canada is also allowed to. I know from personal experience some of the larger sites out there(like matchmaker, date.com, etc) have massive farms of doorway pages that go completely unnoticed by Google. I really do think this is a point that needs some clarification from them, and needs it soon. Oh yeah, and thanks for posting this thread LogicFlux. It was a nice surprise to see it pop up in my referrers.
No prob. Your blog is one of many I've started reading lately as an attempt to take learning SEM seriously. It's quite insightful and in this case I guess you scooped everyone.