Google seems to place a greater empahsis on penalising website owners rather than rewarding efforts, do you think that they are too heavy handed or not? Whatare your experiences of Google as a website owner?
If you focus on spamming the web with your site, then you're likely to get penalised. However if you concentrate of providing value to the visitors of your site and do marketing in a more subtle way, then you're in.
They place the greatest emphasis on quality for there users, and to them we are not there users - it's the searchers
If you went in a right way, you would get a deserved reward in most of the times. However, most of webmasters were gone in a wrong way and that's why only a few got rewards. Please be patient when it comes to seo. You have competitors who wants your place and you need consistency, or hire someone do the tedious jobs as consistency for you to get a results.
Well thats true. Google implements penalty but you will be safe if you follow their guidelines. I never got any penalty but still no one can predict the future.
Chrisba has hit the nail on the head - Google has no interest in website owners, never has had. It doesn't care if it 'rewards' or 'punishes' webmasters, if you think that, you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely It exists for searchers.
Google has not focused on this issue, but the number of websites which are using of blackhat or not search engine friendly methods for ranking their websites is increasing, So you see many websites that are penalized by Google.
Penalties are there for a reason, if Google penalises your website then there is something that must be penalised for. I don't think Google has been heavy handed with penalties. The best thing that you can do is to review your website and look for possible penalty issues. As Google always say, strictly follow Google's webmaster guidelines and you will be alright.