CNET burning decades of blog posts because Google's algorithm rewards it

CNET, one of the longest running tech websites, has decided to delete decades of blog posts to appease the beast that is Google's PageRank algorithm. CNET told Gizmodo that "in an ideal world, we would leave all of our content on our site in perpetuity. Unfortunately, we are penalised by the modern internet for leaving all previously published content live on our site", as "pruning" old content "sends a signal to Google that says CNET is fresh, relevant and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results". It's a perverse set of incentives, but in public at least, Google says the opposite and strongly recommends not deleting old content. The algorithm doesn't agree however and this is apparently a common practice. All the more reason to