actually, he has put in writing that the title of the story isn't true. I still think there are reasonable questions that haven't been answered but I'm not sure we'll actually get answers to those.
To be honest, I'm surprised we got this kind of response from Google at all. They generally don't weigh in on SEO theory.
Matt once told me that if I did a bad thing on my site there wasn't a penalty, I just didn't get as many points as I could. Semantics. When he says "there is no correlation between Email and search" I will maybe believe him. Maybe.
Maybe you are too young to remember the Matt Cutts "use no follow on internal links" debacle where he said that was a good idea.
I read the response from Google as Matt's annoyed a minion said something they shouldn't have, and Google's caught with their pants down on what is a pretty scary thought. "Google Reads Your Email And Does Scary S___ With It"
To be honest, I'm surprised we got this kind of response from Google at all. They generally don't weigh in on SEO theory.