Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

[george]

Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

Feb 1, 2011 at 8:45am ET by Danny Sullivan

Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny [more...]

-- searchengineland.com 2011-02-01

[2008bangkok]

You gotta love this statement

I’ve spent my career in pursuit of a good search engine,” says Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow who oversees the search engine’s ranking algorithm.

Google search engine algorithm is laughable, get some text links and your there! easy

[nikster]

Official Google report on the cheating:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html

The way Google set it up - they spiced search results with searches for non-existent words leading to completely unrelated pages. A week or so later - the SAME non-existent word on Bing would lead to the SAME completely unrelated page.

No matter what Google says, and what Microsoft says - that's pretty much rock solid proof that MS is copying Google results. Apparently they're feeding data from IE8 back to the mothership to do it. If you use Google to search for something, and then click on a link in IE8 - MS will know about it. Apparently also, this process is completely automated as the nonsensical words and fake results planted by Google wouldn't pass human scrutiny.

I am gobsmacked. Bing was supposed to be the "new" Microsoft. Endless resources, and big marketing, but competing fairly with Google and others. Now we find that the Tiger doesn't change his stripes, that Microsoft is cheating and stealing just like they used to, only this time they got caught in the act.

The way they're doing this is extra-creepy too - by selling out their own users' privacy. Your data, entrusted to your computer, gets sent back to Microsoft and used to cheat on search results. Nice touch there, Microsoft!

It's unbelievable. I don't think a lawsuit would lead to much more than a slap on the wrists. Surely the user data they stole was anonymized - but with MS I guess you never know, maybe not - nothing would surprise me at this point.

I know some of my geek friends were switching to Bing for some time because Google got evil - but let's be realistic, no matter how evil Google is trying to be, they can't match Microsoft. You couldn't make this up - no one would believe you!

[bangkokcitylimits]

Hmm.. Google is also not 100% straight

[nikster]

Hmm.. Google is also not 100% straight

ROFL..

In perspective, Google has been pilfering user data since the dawn of time, it's basically half their business model.

[Puccini]

I liked this video of a TV program with the US comedian Colbert about Google's sting:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/373135/february-02-2011/bing-gets-served