Two prudent things to do when you see someone claiming to have insight into search algorithms -
Ask where they are getting their information. "A source at Google" doesn't cut it.
Ask yourself how much sense it makes. What is the likelihood that this could be a signal that improves search quality without causing significant collateral damage? Pretty low in this case.
I can think of plenty of genuinely high quality sites that do a horrible job with email. They probably send bad user signals through Gmail - but why should that impact web search? It shouldn't, and it doesn't.
Ask where they are getting their information. "A source at Google" doesn't cut it.
Ask yourself how much sense it makes. What is the likelihood that this could be a signal that improves search quality without causing significant collateral damage? Pretty low in this case.
I can think of plenty of genuinely high quality sites that do a horrible job with email. They probably send bad user signals through Gmail - but why should that impact web search? It shouldn't, and it doesn't.