Google Updates PageRank, Again...

A fundamental aspect to Google's search engine is a link analysis algorithm called PageRank. PageRank was developed by Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, while they were students at Stanford University. It is believed that PageRank is still used by Google to this day, although there is some controversy regarding the value of the PageRank feature within the Google Toolbar, which is available to the public. The PageRank feature within the Google toolbar is not updated on a set basis, rather Google controls the update process which is displayed to the public via the toolbar and other publicly-available tools. In the month of October 2007, which is yet to be completed, it is believed that the PageRank feature available to the public has been updated twice.
The recent update has brought about some major buzz throughout the Internet due to the fact that many popular web sites have dropped their PR positioning. Here is a list of some sites created by SearchEngineLand that have lost some PR juice:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.forbes.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.suntimes.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.sfgate.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.statcounter.com/ PR10 to PR6
http://www.masternewmedia.org/ PR7 to PR4
http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 to PR4
http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 to PR4
http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 to PR4
http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 to PR4
http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 to PR4
http://www.searchengineguide.com/ PR7 to PR4
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ PR7 to PR4
http://www.johnchow.com/ PR6 to PR4
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 to PR3
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 to PR4
http://andybeard.eu/ PR5 to PR3
http://www.seroundtable.com/ PR7 to PR4
http://www.blogherald.com/ PR6 to PR4

It is believed that this latest update is related to the highly-discussed issue of paid links and the manipulation of Google's algorithms.