My point is that the evidence is wholly insufficient. It was the first post on a new blog (i.e. no reputation), no way to reproduce the reported issue, no reports of it having been reproduced by anyone else, no acknowledgment from Google (ok, maybe it's a little early for that), etc. I mean, from a journalistic, much less scientific, standpoint, it's pretty poor.
How can I provide evidence of a negative? Would you please provide evidence disproving my assertion that flying saucers visited my house last night? And motive? Wasn't that covered earlier by the word "linkbait"?
Maybe my calibration is way off today, but I'm surprised by the level of credulity I've been seeing. My original post (which I deleted and then reposted, sorry about that) got downvoted to subzero with no explanation. I agree with other posters that bugs happen, but I would have thought that such a major claim against a generally competent player like Google would require at least one independent verification.
I'll be curious to see if Google mentions this. Otherwise, we'll really never know. Well, you may, but I guess I'm a little more skeptical.