There's a very interesting thread at Cre8asite, discussing issues raised at WebProWorld - namely, that Microsoft are using doorway pages:

http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=15311

Without encouraging a debate on the rights and wrongs of doorways pages as a tool, I'd like to use this news issue as a discussion point on the use of banning and penalising sites based on various actions specifically advised against in Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

For example, will Google delist a domain on the grounds of using doorway pages, or simply remove the pages in question from its index?

Or does company size matter - is Google happy to delist smaller to medium sites, but far more likely to forgive corporations with their own legal departments?

How actively does Google penalise sites - even ban domains - or does Google even consider the whole issue of penalising sites a complete last resort?

From experience, how seriously do you have to break search engine guidelines before you can expect to have your site delisted?

Ultimately, is it feasable that Google would ever delist a major site like microsoft.com, despite it actively flaunting Google's webmaster guidelines?

General discussion point.

I don't think anyone can answer these questions and be sure they are right - most of it will be guess-work, at best :)

Having said that, in my personal experience websites are definately not treated the same way - for good and bad. Companies that spend a lot of money with Google gets a different service, warnings and time to clean up before penalized - something companies that spend less definately don't get. On the other hand, more prominent sites seems to be more in the spot-light, so to speak. I can get away with pretty spammy stuff on a small and unknown website without Google taking notice but if I do the same on a major brand it will get on the editors table much faster. It may be due to the fact that far more people monitor well known sites and more competitors are after them - ready to report them to Google.

I don't think Google will ever completely ban a site like Microsoft because they have far too much unique content Googles users are looking for. Many other major brands online are not that unique. So, Microsoft is in that sense very special - and lucky. There are a few more sites like that but most are not so unique that Google and Googles users can't live without it. I often see webmasters of prominent companies make that mistake...: Be honest - most likely you are not indispensable :)

FYI, we had a discussion of those exact pages from Microsoft earlier this month. Start here (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=12151#post12151) for a recap of that section of the How Do I Spot Cloaked Sites? thread.