Google released yesterday a Webmaster Central tool that allows site owners to view and download thousands of links to their sites.
As Danny notes at Search Engine Land, Google has intentionally crippled link reporting for years, as the information could be useful to spammers or nefarious SEOs. Google has thus made the new link-reporting tool available only to the site owners — you have to verify that a site is yours before you can view and download the links.
Google’s post on its Google Webmaster Central blog has more info.
Google has been doing an amazing job of cozying up to the developer and Webmaster communities in the last few years. By focusing on site owners, and by indexing blogs faster and better than rivals, Google binds itself to the communities that are most vested in the online world.