@Anon Coward
So ... don't add that particular Google-ian anchor attribute if you don't want to. No big deal. Your pages will validate without it, and the Big G will treat your site only a little differently from those who want to please Her. You'll still have Yahoo and MSN.
For those who don't yet know, the attribute Google wants us to add to any of our "paid links" (including unpaid-yet-potentially-beneficial-to-the-receiver outgoing links) is this: rel="nofollow", as in <a href="http://notmysite.com" rel="nofollow"...
This simple (and, granted, out-of-the-spec) use of the rel attribute won't hurt you in any way except that you'll get those links flagged in a strict HTML validator. Other search engines won't mind, and Google will reward you by not following those links and thanking you for your effort. Screen readers don't give a darn, and I can't find any application that objects to this, any more than they object to the hundreds of MS-specific tags and attributes that currently clutter up the web.
Google simply wants you to tell them not to associate that link with your page content. "Google: Don't follow this link with your spider." Simple. Don't use it, if you don't want to. Your paid links will still get the exposure and visitor clicks. Done deal.
And it's hardly MS-ian, as their mantra is more like, "Our way or screw you."