I’d been holding off on this rumour for many of the same reasons as Barry:

(1) it was not true, (2) if it was, it would be extremely unethical, (3) they have no reason to go that path, (4) if someone found out, it would ruin them in the short term, (5) and there might be some legal issues (not that I know for sure).

Barry’s written a great synopsis at SearchEngineJournal.

The whole thing’s ludicrous, and both MSN and Google have denied that it’s happening.

It shocks me how quickly people are willing to latch onto … certain things… against certain entities.