Nobody has ever thought that the PageRank display in Google's Toolbar renders a complete PR evaluation of a visited site. But its bligness hasn't stopped everyone from relying on it as a rough indicator of a page's Google-worthiness. Now, a posted e-mail from a Google representative is roiling the Webmaster community. Posted in the SEW Forums, the e-mail exerpt drastically minimizes the legitimacy of the Toolbar PR display:

"The PageRank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is for
entertainment purposes only. Due to repeated attempts by hackers to
access this data, Google updates the PageRank data very infrequently
because is it not secure. On average, the PR that is displayed in the
Google Toolbar is several months old. If the toolbar is showing a PR of
zero, this is because the user is visiting a new URL that hasn't been
updated in the last update. The PR that is displayed by the Google
Toolbar is not the same PR that is used to rank the webpage results so
there is no need to be concerned if your PR is displayed as zero."