SEO - How Many Links Per Page?

Google recommends to “Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).” So what is the penalty if you ignor that guideline?

At one time this was the rule because Googlebot was limited in its search index capacity. As Matt Cutts points out, the current recommendation is part of the "Design and Content" guidelines. "If you’re showing well over 100 links per page, you could be overwhelming your users and giving them a bad experience."

Does Google automatically consider a page spam if your page has over 100 links? According to Matt, "No, not at all." Can pages with over 100 links be considered spammy? "Sure, especially if those links are hidden or keyword-stuffed. But pages with lots of links are not automatically considered spammy by Google."

So the danger of excessive links is that Google PageRank can be diminished when shared with hundreds of links and user experience can be degraded.