It does not, a/@rel=nofollow has nothing to do with it, the only thing Google says it will do with these is break searchrank credit transference, and Google themselves recommends to set this attribute:

> anywhere that users can add links by themselves, including within comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-sp...

In fact, Google created this attribute specifically and solely to combat comment/user spam.

If Google decided to expand the role of @rel="nofollow" as a gigantic "fuck you" to everybody that's a different issue, but the article still is not right.

You are repeating this misinformation. As I explained here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456404 Google makes this clear in this answer: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...