[mukyu]

I do not think it would matter if Sergey and Page personally delivered a stone slab engraved with a statement that Google does not use their toolbar's clicks. As you say, you would have to rely on trusting their statements. You seem to require extraordinary evidence that they do not and have no evidence to back up that they actually do use it, and yet cling to belief that they do.

Matt spent 5 paragraphs on the subject, and yet you have laser focus on one statement that is not even contradicted by other evidence and try to derive whatever you want from it.

Here are some other comments from the panel at bigthink, but I'm sure you will find enough wiggle in them to assert that Google faked the moon landing.

Matt Cutts: "I'm not sure that users realize...when they search on Google and click... those results appear--those clicks appear to be encrypted and sent to Microsoft which then appear to be used in Google's [sic] rankings?"

[stuff about EULAs]

Harry Shum: "Everyone does this Matt you know.."

Matt: "Google... I want to categorically deny that Google does this."

Harry: "That Google does what?"

Matt: "We don't use clicks on Bing's users in Google's rankings."

http://bigthink.com/series/62#!selected_item=4845 around 25:00