Ah yes, 13 year old information. Maybe it was true then, it is not now. Cutts had a known pattern of denying anything and everything about their ranking data

Ah yes, 13 year old information. Maybe it was true then, it is not now. Cutts had a known pattern of denying anything and everything about their ranking data until cornered (see his video with Harry Shum of Bing when they caught Bing stealing Google clicks), so I would recommend against using him as a source for almost anything these days. Believe what you want, but apply some basic logic - why would they not use data they already have?