I own about 100 myself, I don't know how thats spammy.

Google got it wrong and now they've built an end game scenario.

The problem they've created is that negative SEO is just getting broader and easier. If you were a company used to soending $100-$290 a month on links, and got hit, surely it must be just as easy to hose down your competitors.

Now that will be bad for Google

Two blokes sitting in the same office reinforcing their own delusions might be one of the reasons for the lack of original thought and the broken moral compass.

This a thought vacuum being filled with whimsies but real people, the working publishers of the internet, suffer for it.

Now Matt could turn up to film one of these videos and give a 10 minute dissertation on best practices for topic X, specific examples, edge cases and what not. The issue I see with that is, that content then becomes inaccessible to a vast number of people who don't work in the search space and can interpret what Matt talks about.

The videos are being produced for varying skill levels, not expert level, seasoned internet marketers or search professionals. Maybe it'd be appropriate to have a different stream of videos with more high end knowledge but wait, they already exist in the hangouts that folks like +John Mueller does where he'll answer specific, more technical issues that might not fit that well for the format/audience of the +Matt Cutts videos.

Speaking to your specific example I can think of so many networks that have far more than 20 domains, all for genuine reasons, I can think of a reason why you'd have a lot of websites — I run over 100 and we need all of them. Matt's comments are still completely valid though, I don't want to link them all together – it is silly, looks strange and provides a poor user experience. Someone wanting to take a holiday in Bali is not going to find value in a raft of links off to an alpine ski lodge at Mt Hotham or an eco retreat on the northern tip of the New Zealand south island. Similarly if I'm viewing a finance website, I am not going to find value in links off to a gardening, fashion, celebrity gossip websites — yet again his comments about linking them together hold up.

Remember, the video is not really about 'why have lots of websites' – it is about 'why have lots of websites and link them together' and I think that is a subtle but important difference to consider.

Anyway, just my 2c!