This alone should be setting off alarm bells for everyone, the government should be raiding Google offices to find the necessary facts to answer these questions. Google operates as the de facto front page of the Internet, the default starting point for the vast majority of the public, and they're incredibly dodgy about the real facts about how they use that power.
It's incredible how often Google both states a "fact" that is extremely biased in their favor, and simultaneously suggest it's indisputable because only Google has data on it, and of course, Google will not share the data because it's confidential business information.
This stonewall is behind incredible lies like the idea that targeted advertising increases revenue by 50%, despite independent data finding the difference closer to 4%.
I think the issue at hand here, is that Google should be legally compelled to disclose the real answers to this question, and a lot of other questions about how their algorithms work.
> The data in the article comes from 100 million people dumb enough to infect their devices with malware
This is ironic, considering the Google Toolbar, headed by Sundar Pichai himself, is much of how Google got it's mass adaption as well as browsing data to improve their search rankings. Perhaps the difference between "malware" and "useful tool" is how successful the business behind it is. ;)
