Additionally, if things were reversed and Google was posed these questions, I would imagine would be lacking just as many answers as what Bing is supplying.
There is a subtle point that many posts like this are overlooking. Google didn't run this experiment to cause bing to show bogus results, they did it to confirm the rise in suspiciously similar results produced by bing.
Google didn't run this experiment to cause bing to show bogus results, they did it to confirm...
I think 99% of HN, including myself, will share your opinion, but it doesn't counter Bing's claims because it boils down to "which company do we believe?"
Bing: doh, of course we use google results, but we told you that before in an obscure academic paper. Didn't you read that? And we are innovative - shiny pictures!
That's like saying you'd be evasive like OJ Simpson if you murdered a few people and were on trial.
So if Google used Bing to rank searches it would also be under scrutiny? Since that's not the case we can all avoid the useless thought experiment can't we?
Chrome tracks clicks and traffic. Google Toolbar tracks clicks and traffic. The difference in the situation is that the majority of people use IE to search on Google, not the Google toolbar/Chrome to search on Bing. Bing has more data to work from than Google does in regards to this exact type of click tracking.