There is a common misconception among many that Google will reward you with excellent rankings if they follow Whitehat SEO. It’s simply not true. No one has ever said that if you use Whitehat SEO practices that you would be guaranteed good rankings not even Google said that. But using Whitehat SEO practices guarantee you that you won't be banned from Google's index or penalized or filtered. Blackhat SEO is a short-term strategy. It guarantees that if you are caught your URLs or domain will be filtered, penalized, and in extreme cases banned from Google's search. A simple saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" i.e. being totally dependent on Google traffic. There is no guarantee that if you have good rankings, Google will ensure that you enjoy ranking consistency after an Algorithm update. So, if your business is totally dependent on Google better avoid Blackhat SEO. It's Google's index and if you want to use it better learn to play by their rules. If someone can add some additional color, it will be helpful for many.
In general scheme of things maybe your post is correct. But there are just so many blackhat techniques, that not all of them get you banned. Like posting bogus Playstation ads on craigslist for cheap just to gather email list is an ancient blackhat technique. This does no harm by Google. It really depends which blackhat technique your talking about, not all of them have to do with Google.
oh my thoughts on "don't put all your eggs in one basket" Well, you shouldn't do that in any biz or anything in life really. Lol.
Ya, i agree with you Infimis. There are few Black Hat techniques that don't go under the radar of Google algorithm, which i don't want to post here and i would also suggest you to not to post such techniques anywhere.
There is not just Google, there is also other search engines, Use technique which do not hurt your ranking .
Anything that could be un natural will hurt your efforts, it is best to drip feed links, starting off 10 per day,t hen after a week 20 per day, then 40 and 80 per day after a month, it looks natural to Google, rather than 30 links one day then nothing.
There's a fine line between "black hat" and "white hat" like posting a press release on multiple PR sites en masse can be a legit PR action or a "black hat" technique. Use common sense, build a useful resource, try not to trick neither your visitors nor the search engines, and you'll be all right