Does Google Hate Directories Now?

So you’ve all probably heard about TrustRank by now, and if you read SEO Book, you know that it could possibly screw low quality directories (i.e., 95% of them), making the links they hand out worthless.

Meanwhile, it appears the Google may be publicly taking some steps to combat spammy link building via directories. From Threadwatch:

According to the members at the DP forums, several directory categories in high profile sites such as Dmoz and Yahoo have been blanked out of PageRank.
We’ve talked in the past about Google targeting directory sites for
various reasons, but this time it comes with a twist, cutting off PR at
major sources. Those blanked out categories include…

• Dmoz: Computers – Internet – Searching – Directories
• Google – Computers – Internet – Searching – Directories
• Yahoo – Computers & Internet – Internet – WWW – Search engines & Directories

Personally I am surprised they would combat spammy directory links this way (if in fact it is what they are doing). Why wouldn’t they just greybar obviously SEO-inspired directories, or make the links from them worthless?