Google cares about "paid links" in the sense that they don't want people to use their pagerank for monetary gain. This is clearly not TechCrunch's intent. Similarly, tiny conferences like http://www.alohaonrails.com/ do the same thing, and don't get shut down. I don't see the double standard in that case.
Intent shouldn't factor into Google's algorithm as that's a thin line even Google can't accurately toe without getting it very wrong. Just because these links are a by-product of advertising with a website doesn't make them anything but paid links. I didn't look but those links should be no-followed, and if they aren't you'd be crazy to assume those advertisers are gaining nothing (rank) from them.
