Google Shuts Public Access to Page Ranks

Google has today give a bit of jolt to the SEO experts out there by pretty much killing off page ranks. Most web experts put a very high value on Page Ranks because of the assumption that a higher page rank was key to getting better placement in search results on Google.
Google Page Rank is considered as an authority value, Google gave every website or for that matter every page it crawled.
That means we can pretty much expect that no one can view Page Rank data publicly. There might be a few hacks and work around at the moment but chances are Google will come around to shutting off Page Rank data publicly with no exceptions.

Why Google took this step?

Over the years some websites have tried to buy backlinks from websites with high page ranks. This was a way of gaming the Page Rank system. I think with this Google will make it difficult for websites to sell links on their website as they would not know of any proven way to show Google ranks them higher.
Last week Google Panda 2.5 was rolled out and we can assume removing page rank data can be considered to inside that grand strategy of Google revamping its search algorithm.

Update:

It seems Google changed the URL of the API which ended up showing no Page Rank to all websites. This probably disallows third-party apps from displaying the correct page rank. We can still access the Page Rank using Google Toolbar on Internet Explorer.
I never obsessed over page rank a lot, but it was exciting to see a blog getting a higher rank. Will you miss Google Page Rank? Do drop in your comments.