To be fair, I think that claim would be justified if they were "merely" grabbing the Google SERPs their users happen to receive, turning them into ranked lists of URLs, and using that data some way.
It would even be justified if they were harvesting click data only from Google (or explicitly treating that click data differently), because then they're just doing the last one, but obfuscating it: it would be like refusing to bribe a politician directly, but instead making a large "investment" in a corporation they own.
It's not a justified claim if they built a mechanism that genuinely gathers interesting data, and would continue to do so in Google's absence. I think Microsoft is claiming this, but their responses have been so murky that it's not 100% clear. Google certainly hasn't produced evidence that renders this version implausible.
It would even be justified if they were harvesting click data only from Google (or explicitly treating that click data differently), because then they're just doing the last one, but obfuscating it: it would be like refusing to bribe a politician directly, but instead making a large "investment" in a corporation they own.
It's not a justified claim if they built a mechanism that genuinely gathers interesting data, and would continue to do so in Google's absence. I think Microsoft is claiming this, but their responses have been so murky that it's not 100% clear. Google certainly hasn't produced evidence that renders this version implausible.