In my opinion Google is going to make a lot of changes regarding
PR, the recent de-valuing of high ranking directories is the first signal of this.
In the future I believe any website that sells links for
PR, will suffer in the organic listings, possibly a year ban.
As for the
PR toolbar, I think it would be a good thing to scrap it as it has been totally devalued by a number of people employing certain tactics. By removing the toolbar it would give lower ranked sites a boost by putting them on a level playing field with sites that have a higher
PR. At present a visitor would more likely think a site with a high
PR has more value than one with none, this is often not the case as many sites have artificially ranked. The same is the case with the Alexa rating system, I often see sites that are only a few months old with no
PR and have a rating under 100,000. This is gained by simply purchasing IP pinging software.
Eventually the internet will have a level playing field where online businesses are audited and checked for the services they provide. This will result in millions of teenagers taking up regular employment and the internet being a lot cleaner.