Originally Posted by AdultKing

I didn't say they didn't need Google, I said they don't need them as much as most other sites. If they got temporarily de-indexed or pushed down in rankings because of a problem they would have no problem fixing the issues and recovering. Google has penalised big sites before.

A smaller site that is a main source of income for a webmaster wouldn't be able to survive a de-indexing or penalty as easily.