I'm not sure how I feel about the first claim (having just read the article) but the author misses the point. Whether it sends the information to Google or Bing it's still the violation of privacy is the fact that everything you type is being sent somewhere. In fact it's made worse by you being able to use other search engines because it means other companies could abuse the information even if Google doesn't.

Again I'm not saying I agree with Microsoft. In all honesty anyone who uses Chrome should realize this is happening (since it uses the Google auto complete when you start typing and so would have to send keystrokes back). But it's something to think about.