> Given two solutions with equal potential for abuse, why not pick the technically superior solution?

Straw man. You're presupposing the existence of 'ping'. The argument is why, given an observation that web features X and Y are being used to implement contentious function Z, would you want to implement a brand new, even more insidious, web feature, designed solely for doing Z, in the first place? Technical superiority of the new implementation of Z is not in dispute.

> they already know which you click on.

I'm pretty confident that they don't in my case.

> I'm pretty confident that they don't in my case.

Would you mind sharing the details of how you achieve this?

Monitor the HTTP activity with FF developer tools while using Google. It's plain to see that no new traffic flows to Google occurs when I click a link.

AFAIK they track links only for a subset of users and not every time.

There are extensions that will rewrite the referral links back to the original link, or prevent the link from being swapped in the moment of onmousedown or whatever they use.