Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results

Cheating? by jdelisle · 2011-02-01 05:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

And why is that cheating? Sounds like simple observance in an effort to get improve results.

Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Simple observance in an effort to get improve results."
If I said that to my teacher when caught cheating, I doubt it would have had much sway.
Re:Cheating? by yincrash · 2011-02-01 05:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's like a student cheating on his homework by copying the smart kid. It will only work as long as the smart kid sticks around.
Re:Cheating? by bunratty · 2011-02-01 05:39 · Score: 1, Interesting

I tried to use this excuse when I watched over the admin's shoulder while he was typing his password so I could perform simple admin duties. I tried to argue that I was using simple observance to improve results, but for some reason he didn't buy it either!

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Re:Cheating? by MrHanky · 2011-02-01 05:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

It only improves the results for as long as Google is better than Bing. Basically, Microsoft trusts Google more than it trusts its own product.
Re:Cheating? by MightyYar · 2011-02-01 05:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

And why is that cheating? Sounds like simple observance in an effort to get improve results.
I don't think that it is cheating.
It is slimy, though. Intercepting your customers interactions with a 3rd party for your own benefit is slimy, even if they do click on an "agreement" that they don't read or understand.
If you want this kind of information, you should pay people for it or make it specifically opt-in. Neilson would be the closest example from the pre-dot-com world.

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Re:Cheating? by jdelisle · 2011-02-01 05:46 · Score: 1

According to your analogy, you are implying that Microsoft did something illegal. If Microsoft's actions are illegal, then I agree with you. However, I don't see any mention of law breaking.
Re:Cheating? by Sir_Sri · 2011-02-01 05:49 · Score: 1

Depends if they're necessarily grabbing the google result, or the fact that people searched for a term, and paired it with what they clicked on. To me that's a legitimate algorithm, (heck, it could be an exercise in machine learning).
Does the trick work with any search engine, or just google? For example if the engine was bing, but they honepotted something equally random, then trained it with a few dozen clicks then they're just learning based on what people click on, and that it happens to learn from google as well as anyone else isn't really a shock.
Re:Cheating? by mibe · 2011-02-01 05:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's cheating because instead of generating good search results, they look at someone else's search results and output those. It's not theft, it's not illegal, but it is kind of a shitty thing to do. Or, here's how the guy interviewed in TFA said it (pretty well if you ask me):

“It’s cheating to me because we work incredibly hard and have done so for years but they just get there based on our hard work,” said Singhal. “I don’t know how else to call it but plain and simple cheating. Another analogy is that it’s like running a marathon and carrying someone else on your back, who jumps off just before the finish line.”
Re:Cheating? by morgan_greywolf · 2011-02-01 05:51 · Score: 2

The action probably violates Google's TOS, so it might be actionable. (IANAL, TINLA, etc.)

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Re:Cheating? by rogueippacket · 2011-02-01 05:51 · Score: 1

And the smart kid isn't always right. After nearly a decade in power, the limitations of Google search are starting to show at the seams.
Re:Cheating? by cayenne8 · 2011-02-01 05:53 · Score: 1

Well, like with anything 'web' related, I'm a huge proponent of the C.A.S.E. method. (Copy And Steal Everything).
Take what others do..learn from it..use it, and hopefully improve on it.
Just because someone made money on it first, doesn't mean you can't make money off it too...and don't have to bother with all the R&E on the *new* original idea.

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Re:Cheating? by cayenne8 · 2011-02-01 05:57 · Score: 0

"The action probably violates Google's TOS, so it might be actionable"
Hmm...I dunno about you, but I've never seen or agreed to any Terms Of Service from Google when visiting their main search page. I'd think it would be touch to enforce any terms that aren't even presented to you before using their public service.
At worst...you might get on *Double Secret Probation*...but I can't imagine you'd be in any more trouble than that legally.

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Re:Cheating? by _0xd0ad · 2011-02-01 06:01 · Score: 2

I'm pretty sure that what they did was at least a violation of Google's TOS. RTFA.
What they did:
Take a search which results in 0 results on both Google and Bing: the manufactured nonsense-word "hiybbprqag".
Then activate a feature they'd secretly built in to Google: a single, hand-picked page is artificially returned as the single and only search result for that term.
A few days/weeks/months later - oh look, there it is showing up on Bing. (In case you're wondering, it's The Wiltern seating chart and tickets to The Wiltern. Google no longer lists it as a result, rather Google has tons of other pages that have now cropped up mentioning that word. No surprise.)
It's basically the same as catching a cheater by writing wrong answers on the sheet you suspect they're copying answers from.
Re:Cheating? by amicusNYCL · 2011-02-01 06:04 · Score: 1, Informative

It only improves the results for as long as Google is better than Bing. Basically, Microsoft trusts Google more than it trusts its own product.
That's not true. It makes perfect sense for a search engine to look for things like this to help it decide what is relevant and what isn't. The only thing "unique" about this particular situation is that it's another search engine instead of some random site that they're mining. Google also looks at the links people click on in their results. It isn't exactly a stretch to assume that every search engine would also want to know which links people are clicking on other search engines. Regardless of which search engine they're looking at, it's useful to know that when a user searches for a certain term, they click certain links. It makes those links more relevant to that term. The only thing you can argue about is whether or not it's "proper" for a search engine to use that data from another search engine. I don't see the problem, it makes all of their results more relevant. That's not really a bad thing.
Can you guarantee that the Google toolbar doesn't collect similar information if you go to Yahoo or Bing and do a search there?

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Cheating? by qw(name) · 2011-02-01 06:04 · Score: 1

Did you have to sign/read/agree to/ the TOS before you were allowed to perform a web search? Neither did I or anyone else. It's not even presented as an option.
Re:Cheating? by Saint+Stephen · 2011-02-01 06:05 · Score: 0

It does not imply Google is better. (although google may be in fact better, copying them does not imply that). It implies that google is the Leader (no One disputes that) and MS finds value in making their results match Google. People are comfortable when they find "x is the same as y" so they will be more willing to UsE either.
Re:Cheating? by bemymonkey · 2011-02-01 06:06 · Score: 1

Wouldn't that make Microsoft even stupider for copying Google's search results?
Re:Cheating? by Cheech+Wizard · 2011-02-01 06:19 · Score: 2

Why not come out and say it - Bing needs to copy Google's results because the Bing algorithm sucks. But - I'm happy they're doing it. I get a lot of people from Google searches coming to my web sites and traffic from Bing is picking up significantly as of late.
Re:Cheating? by tendrousbeastie · 2011-02-01 06:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

It depends on the purpose of the practice.
The purpose of an exam is to test the student's knowledge and abilities, so using someone else's answer clearly damages this.
The purpose of an admin password is to prevent unauthorised access, so sneaking a look over the admin's shoulder violates this purpose.
The purpose of a search engine is to provide search results that match the user's desire for information. What Bing are doing is compatible with this purpose.
That doesn't mean its right, I'm just pointing out a couple of false analogies.
Re:Cheating? by tendrousbeastie · 2011-02-01 06:32 · Score: 1

Can anyone define what 'better' is in this context, in order to clarify the discussion?
Re:Cheating? by hoggoth · 2011-02-01 06:41 · Score: 1

Fucking Microsoft, How Does It Work?

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Re:Cheating? by bmcage · 2011-02-01 06:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

It is cheating if you have an OS monopoly and a browser that a very large piece of the internet-users use, while Yahoo and Ask, .... don't have that advantage.
At a minimum they should add a "provided by google" after the link :-D
Re:Cheating? by Tubal-Cain · 2011-02-01 06:50 · Score: 1, Interesting

>
The purpose of a search engine is to provide search results that match the user's desire for information. What Bing are doing is compatible with this purpose.
That doesn't mean its right, I'm just pointing out a couple of false analogies.
It does change the question of "what's the best search engine?" from Google vs Bing to Google (today) vs Google (last month)
Re:Cheating? by sumdumass · 2011-02-01 06:52 · Score: 1

Are you sure he would need to see one? Aren't the results of Google's effort copyrighted to the extent that it's their own derivative creation of a collection of other people's copyrighted works?
It's sort of like the GPL, use doens't pertain so if someone searches and uses the results, they are fine. But it gets dicey when they duplicate or copy the results and redistribute them. In that case, a license would probably need to exist else it could be a copyright violation wouldn't it?
Re:Cheating? by Idbar · 2011-02-01 06:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

Dude, really? On my only interview I got with a guy from Microsoft I was asked if I knew how to build a boat, when I said no, he said how would I do to build a boat for a customer.

I started to make a list of things I would to to build a boat and then I was asked what would I do if I was asked to have it faster by the customer. My reply was to look into what could wait to be installed later.

All this time I've been questioning what I answered wrong. And It seems clear now (yes, I didn't get into a second interview): The answer is "copy one", "buy one and disassemble it" or "buy one from the company and make it look like it's yours". Darn! I wish I knew this before my interview! I guess thanks go to Google.
Re:Cheating? by Idbar · 2011-02-01 06:59 · Score: 1

While I certainly agree with you up to some point. The problem here is that you're comparing an individual to a production machine. Ask the same to the Japanese from the after-war era, or the Chinese. They copied everything until they got enough insight to start their businesses on their own.

Unluckily, half of what you're saying is right. it will work as long as the smart kid sticks around, or as long as you take over and get an advantage. Sad as it sounds, wasn't that the whole boom of the Japanese cars and technology in the market?

Note that I don't agree with the practice, but it's rather common.
Re:Cheating? by MrHanky · 2011-02-01 07:03 · Score: 1

You forgot to refute what I said.
Re:Cheating? by Sulphur · 2011-02-01 07:05 · Score: 1

Wouldn't that make Microsoft even stupider for copying Google's search results?
But its the most popular search on the net. I just ordered one.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:11 · Score: 0

Yahoo has that advantage.

Bing *IS* their search engine, remember?
Re:Cheating? by treeves · 2011-02-01 07:22 · Score: 1

If that were the ONLY thing they were doing, yes.

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Re:Cheating? by amicusNYCL · 2011-02-01 07:31 · Score: 1

It doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft trusting Google more than Bing. It's simply more points of data. Microsoft trusts Google to provide accurate points of data. That doesn't automatically mean they trust it more than Bing.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Cheating? by jbengt · 2011-02-01 07:31 · Score: 1

Copyright would be an issue if you copied the results page verbatim and published it, but using the data from search results to make your own page doesn't fall under copyright.
IANAL, YMMV
Re:Cheating? by Frosty+Piss · 2011-02-01 07:33 · Score: 2

It's like a student cheating on his homework...
No, it's not. This isn't homework or a test.

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Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:38 · Score: 1

This is also not a car.
Re:Cheating? by sumdumass · 2011-02-01 07:40 · Score: 1

The purpose of a search engine is to provide search results that match the user's desire for information. What Bing are doing is compatible with this purpose.

Sort of. What bing is doing is more comparable to copying pages from a murder mystery novel in order to write their own murder mystery novel in the hopes that theirs will be more popular then the one they copied from.
People might ignore the fact that the search results are basically copyrighted works, but you can look at them very similar. They are collections of links and other copyrighted works created and compiled by a company for the purpose of benefiting their own customers in search for specific information. Bing pulling the information and presenting it as if it was their own is littler different then me taking your blog, even though it's primarily composed to news articles you pilfered from around the net pasted with your comments, and presenting it as if it was my own work. Last I head, my passing your work off as mine, was not a proper thing to do.
Now where the confusion comes into play is exactly with books and exceptions to copyright. Searches take advantage to exceptions to the copyright's exclusive control over reproduction, copying and distribution. But a search engine that copies the results of another search engine for monetary gain wouldn't likely fall within those exceptions at all. You see, when you search as the user, you get to use the results in any way that copyright doesn't reserve as an exclusive right to the copyright owners. Most search engines go even futher and don't react to us copying the links or whatever as long as it ends up in their benefit. But I'm not sure how google could see a competitor copying their results as being to their benefit. I don't see how it is much different from copying Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", then relabeling it "what do you think of this" a book by sumdumass.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:46 · Score: 0

It's deemed "Strategic Imitation". It's what happens after Apple launches a product.
Re:Cheating? by froggymana · 2011-02-01 07:46 · Score: 1

Bing isn't really copying Google 100% on everything. They use Google as a reference. Bing copies Google on searches that they have no results for currently along with adding some of their own stuff to it as they crawl the web.

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Re:Cheating? by MrHanky · 2011-02-01 07:47 · Score: 1

Unless Bing puts Google right at the top of its search results. Which is what it does.
Re:Cheating? by sumdumass · 2011-02-01 07:51 · Score: 2

I'm not sure why it wouldn't. I mean it is using the content generated by google isn't it.
When we as consumers of google's services use the content, we are using it how it was intended and generally in ways that wouldn't be considered copying their product. However, repackaging google search results wold be little different then copying pages from several novels in order to create your own wouldn't it?
Re:Cheating? by jayme0227 · 2011-02-01 07:53 · Score: 1

I don't know about that. This basically gives Microsoft a larger sample size to observe. Even if Google's results aren't as good as Bing's, they would be good enough more often than not, and thus Bing's algorithm could learn from them.

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Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:55 · Score: 0

How does Bing's explanation fit into this? It appears that the result is due to an 'opt-in' for the bing search bar. Is it not the same principle like crawling, in this case in a 'live environment'?
Sheesh
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:58 · Score: 0

Oh come on. Nobody pays for that kind of information. People give their address books to Facebook, their whereabouts to Google, their shopping habits to various loyalty card systems and so on and so on. Suppose Google starts ranking venues by the crowds they draw, based on information gathered by a Latitude app on a Windows phone. Are you going to complain about that too? If you are a manager and you suggest paying someone so that you're allowed to spy on them, you're going to be asked to close the door from the other side.
This is Microsoft crowdsourcing an almost trivial piece of information: When presented with 10 links, which of these does the user expect to be relevant to a given set of search words. Nothing more, nothing less. If you think this is shady, don't open your eyes too much or you're going to feel nauseated all day long.
Re:Cheating? by retchdog · 2011-02-01 08:01 · Score: 1

it's more like a database than a creative work so it's not covered yet (there have been some attempts to institute database protection).

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Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:05 · Score: 0

So... you don't want better results, you want results that are potentially worse just so long as it follows an arbitrary set of "fair" rules. I don't personally don't care if companies cheat, cheat away! As long as I get better results then I win
Re:Cheating? by pclminion · 2011-02-01 08:10 · Score: 0

It's cheating because instead of generating good search results, they look at someone else's search results and output those.
Yeah, those piggybacking FUCKERS! They don't do any of their own reporting or editing, they just screen-scrape the sites of reputable, hard-working news organizations and populate their front page with purloined content!
Wait... We're talking about Google News, right?
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:10 · Score: 0

What you said doesn't really need to be refuted. Your premise is faulty. It's not like people who throw any old bullshit into the conversation need to be treated seriously just because they believe themselves.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:12 · Score: 0

For one, it probably violates Google's TOS. One C&D letter plus a few more days of violation could equal millions in settlement.
Re:Cheating? by nametaken · 2011-02-01 08:15 · Score: 0

I'm pretty sure they're not just screen-scraping results from google and redisplaying them at Bing.
They're collecting information that helps them black-box how Google's search works. In short, they're learning by investigation, not just copying. There's nothing wrong with this.
Re:Cheating? by Gerzel · 2011-02-01 08:25 · Score: 1

Indeed especially when they claim it is their own search algorithm and superior to Google's.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:29 · Score: 0

"mbzrxpgjys" still returns rim as the first hit at Bing
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:29 · Score: 0

Actually what they are relying on is that the end user will select the best possible result presented by the various search engines. If Microsoft is not looking at all different search engines when they do this they are foolish. My guess is that they get the most useful info from sites like Baidu where query/ngram identification is more difficult.
Re:Cheating? by LBArrettAnderson · 2011-02-01 08:40 · Score: 1

No one seems to have read the article. Bing isn't copying google's algorithm. It isn't searching google to get results. It's observing what its users end up visiting after searching for specific terms. I'm sure it also happens when a user uses most other large search engines.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:41 · Score: 0

It only improves the results for as long as Google is better than Bing. Basically, Microsoft trusts Google more than it trusts its own product.
Would you care to elaborate on how various inputs to Bing are weighted, you being an expert on this and all?
k thx bai
Re:Cheating? by Daniel+Phillips · 2011-02-01 08:43 · Score: 1

The action probably violates Google's TOS, so it might be actionable. (IANAL, TINLA, etc.)
Interesting. So if Google uses Yahoo's web directory to seed its index would that violate Yahoo's terms of service?

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Re:Cheating? by deblau · 2011-02-01 08:45 · Score: 1

http://lmgtfy.com/
Is this cheating? Perhaps not. But would it change your mind if they spent millions of dollars advertising that they were better / different than Google and tried to take away from Google's market share?
This smacks of unfair business practices. Microsoft should be ashamed, but more than that they should be sued.

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This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Re:Cheating? by pjt33 · 2011-02-01 08:49 · Score: 2

The big question I have is: how? Unless Bing is searching Google for randomly generated nonsense, they must have been prompted by something. Is IE reporting all search terms to Redmond?
Re:Cheating? by t2t10 · 2011-02-01 08:50 · Score: 1

Microsoft needs to copy the results in order to process them; that's sufficient for copyright infringement.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:54 · Score: 0

I don't think that it is cheating.
It is slimy, though. Intercepting your customers interactions with a 3rd party for your own benefit is slimy, even if they do click on an "agreement" that they don't read or understand.
If you want this kind of information, you should pay people for it or make it specifically opt-in. Neilson would be the closest example from the pre-dot-com world.
UHHH... Internet advertising?? What you've described is so common on the Internet it dilutes the meaning of slimy quite a bit.
Re:Cheating? by Oligonicella · 2011-02-01 09:00 · Score: 1

You mean like Google pays people to keep those cookies around that track and report on things you do without your consent? Google simple doesn't like being done to as it does.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:22 · Score: 0

The Bing toolbar is not shipped with Windows. MS pays OEMs to install it, just like Google does for theirs.
The Google toolbar does all sorts of seedy stuff to observe you, and it never really uninstalls itself. Google don't observe people clicking on Bing results because they don't need to, because they get enough volume on their own to provide quality results.
Not to mention, Yahoo! and Ask DO have their own toolbars.
Re:Cheating? by BLAG-blast · 2011-02-01 09:23 · Score: 2

The big question I have is: how?
if (bing.getResult() == "") then { return google.getResult(); }

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Re:Cheating? by Daniel+Phillips · 2011-02-01 09:24 · Score: 1

And why is that cheating? Sounds like simple observance in an effort to get improve results.
It's cheating in my book. I suggest you look into your own heart and make your own decision. Regardless of what you think, cheating is in Microsoft's DNA and this is because Microsoft is moulded in the image of its founder.
Don't get me wrong, Google is not pristine. I witnessed cheating of various kinds while I worked there, mostly connected with personal advancement. However, cheating in the search engine is explicitly banned. It is not in Google's DNA to cheat at its core business. This is just based on my own observations of course, I certainly did not delve into every little crack of the organization. But this aspect of Google's corporate culture is very much front and center. Naturally in an organization of that size things are bound to slip through the cracks. I do not believe that such behaviour is pervasive at Google, whereas it is at Microsoft, and there it seems even to be glorified, or perhaps a precondition of maintaining a high career velocity.

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Re:Cheating? by mr_lizard13 · 2011-02-01 09:26 · Score: 1

It's like a student cheating on his homework by copying the smart kid. It will only work as long as the smart kid sticks around.

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Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:28 · Score: 0

"like" and "is" are two different words
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:29 · Score: 0

No, it only improves results so long as people still use google to find what they are looking for. Bing isn't scraping google, Bing is monitoring which sites people go to after searching with google.
Re:Cheating? by MadnessASAP · 2011-02-01 09:31 · Score: 2

Essentially, yes. The Google engineers believe the reporting is happening within IE Suggested Sites or the Bing Toolbar, both of which EULAs say that they report back to Microsoft.

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Re:Cheating? by buzzsawddog · 2011-02-01 09:48 · Score: 1

You do not have to copy something verbatim for it to be copyright infringement... At best, this might fall under creating a derivative work? Another problem I see is for something to fall under copyright it must be "fixed in a tangible form of expression". This almost seems that each and every search must be saved. While I can see Google saving the search terms, I don't think they save the search results for each and search... The fact that: " Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation..." (http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#what), makes it even more difficult to believe that Google would have grounds for a copyright suit... A google search seems to be a non fixed "expression" of a system/method of operation (search algorithm). A given search today may return different results tomorrow.
Re:Cheating? by adtifyj · 2011-02-01 09:52 · Score: 1

you probably know this, but database copyright does exist in some countries. This probably doesn't help as any legal action would likely end up occurring in the US, which doesn't protect database rights. Usually database rights are stupid, and unnecessarily limit innovation.
The problem with Bing's action is that Microsoft hasn't been telling the consumer that they are sending their Google search data to Microsoft.
Re:Cheating? by cheater512 · 2011-02-01 09:52 · Score: 1

Quite possibly, but Google uses DMOZ not Yahoo's directory.
Re:Cheating? by sumdumass · 2011-02-01 09:52 · Score: 1

Sure it's like a database. But the database would be covered wouldn't it?
According to this, it would be in most cases.
I know there was a case about phone numbers where the database wasn't protected, but that hinged a lot on the law requiring the numbers to be published and publicly available/distributed to everyone in the local calling areas.
Re:Cheating? by isorox · 2011-02-01 09:53 · Score: 2

It's like a student cheating on his homework by copying the smart kid. It will only work as long as the smart kid sticks around.
Most kids just google the answer now, I'm not sure how the analogy holds up.
Re:Cheating? by uglyduckling · 2011-02-01 09:56 · Score: 2

You missed the important point: if (bing.getResult(string) == "") then { return google.getResult(string); } - where does the string come from? You have to know the nonsense word to discover the google result, which means that Bing must have some system for mining Google.
Re:Cheating? by TENTH+SHOW+JAM · 2011-02-01 10:12 · Score: 1

At a minimum they should add a "provided by google" after the link
No. at very least there should be a Google ad banner on the page. In all truth if I was google, I would be using the results to encourage Bing users to end up at Goatse sites. This may play with the "Don't be Evil" thing, and is probably why I don't work for Google. (that and not being clever enough)

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Re:Cheating? by MightyYar · 2011-02-01 10:12 · Score: 1

Maybe... but cookies are pretty common and only work on Google's sites and sites who partner with Google. This Bing Toolbar is taking it to the next level.
This is a browser toolbar which claims to help you do things Bingish, and meanwhile reports back to MS what you are doing along with, it appears, results of your surfing.
There are some who hate tracking cookies, but I think most of us kind of accept that someone can and will track you when you load their content - even if it is ads. It's somewhat more unsettling to think that someone is watching EVERYTHING you do, no matter what site you visit.
In my opinion, they have crossed a line.

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Re:Cheating? by amicusNYCL · 2011-02-01 10:17 · Score: 1

Oh. Well, it was my mistake for not realizing that you have knowledge of how the Bing search ranking algorithm works. Here I thought you were just making assumptions.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Cheating? by MightyYar · 2011-02-01 10:21 · Score: 1

UHHH... Internet advertising??

A single company can't track everything you do on the internet. Sure, google can track you every time you view a Google ad, and Google ads are all over the place - but I think most people who care understand this... you visit a site, they can track you.
MS has taken it to the next level - they can track you no matter what site you visit. You aren't asking their server for anything, and yet they know you made a request. Sure, you clicked "Yes" on some bullshit text when you installed the Bing Toolbar... but that doesn't excuse this kind of spyware.

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Re:Cheating? by Dthief · 2011-02-01 10:22 · Score: 1

its called the bing toolbar.....RTFA

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Re:Cheating? by MightyYar · 2011-02-01 10:23 · Score: 1

If you think this is shady, don't open your eyes too much or you're going to feel nauseated all day long.
Until Microsoft did this, we called it "spyware". Maybe the standard has been changed, but I still find spyware to be slimy.

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Re:Cheating? by IAmGarethAdams · 2011-02-01 10:40 · Score: 1

Yeah, I really HATE it when a search engine collates data for me and tells me *exactly* where it got that informati.. oh wait, I may have missed your point
Re:Cheating? by mijelh · 2011-02-01 11:06 · Score: 1

The analogy is invalid anyway: the objective of homework is to learn, and by cheating you learn (almost) nothing. The objective of bing is to offer good results, and aggregating data from other search engines can be part of the solution.
Re:Cheating? by Flipao · 2011-02-01 11:07 · Score: 1

There would be nothing wrong with this if they kept the results to themselves instead of trying to pass them off as their own.
Re:Cheating? by cheekyjohnson · 2011-02-01 11:12 · Score: 1

Well, like with anything 'web' related, I'm a huge proponent of the C.A.S.E. method. (Copy And Steal Everything).
Take what others do..learn from it..use it, and hopefully improve on it.
Spoken like someone who stole millions of dollars in potential profit...

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Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 11:14 · Score: 0

If a search engine can't use user clicks as evidence when calculating a ranking, the Google cheats too. Essentially this is what Bing is doing - simply counting user clicks as evidence that a particular link is relevant given a particular query. I think in the end they actually innovated a bit by realizing that a user clicking on a link in Google is just as much evidence as a user clicking on a link generated by Bing. Cheating would be if Google engineers took a peek at the source code for the Bing search engine.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 11:17 · Score: 0

More on this it trusts Google (and most likely other search engines including BING) USERS to provide accurate points of data, as it is the User's clickstream. It would be an interesting test to create completely fake click streams, eg have no external site return a result, but edit the DOM and inject an URL for various search engines (or monkey with /Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts and create fake pages), click on it and see if there is a boost in the results.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 11:22 · Score: 0

I'm pretty sure they're not just screen-scraping results from google and redisplaying them at Bing.
I'm pretty sure they are doing exactly that, based on the honeypot results.

To summarize the tests: Google engineers modified their algorithms to return specific results for a several specific search terms -- results which would not have occurred with the unmodified algorithm -- and lo and behold, Bing continued to return identical results to the artificially-skewed Google algorithm.

Call the process what you will, Bing is copying and redisplaying the results of Google searches as their own. And IMO, that's scurrilous.
Re:Cheating? by BLAG-blast · 2011-02-01 11:24 · Score: 1

where does the string come from?
Somebody typed the word into a Bing query entry box and hit submit. I.e.: A person searches for a term, and if Bing doesn't have any results for that term, then it goes to google.com, performs a search for the same term and returns those results. Does that help?

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M0571y H@rml355.
Re:Cheating? by high_rolla · 2011-02-01 11:32 · Score: 1

And it only improves the results up until the point in time that people work out how to abuse this. It could easily be Google mass abusing it or it could be pranksters who find humorous uses of it. Either way I'd say it's not going to take too long. Then what have Bing achieved?
It'll be a great example of how these types of approaches really don't pay off in the long run.

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Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
Re:Cheating? by ThePromenader · 2011-02-01 11:50 · Score: 1

"Copy it from someone who already does it" sums up pretty well everything MS does, all they care about is market potential and market share. If I were asked that question (by anyone) in an interview, my answer would be: "Why, are you a boat-making company?"

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No, no sig. Really.

ThePromenader
Re:Cheating? by NickFortune · 2011-02-01 11:57 · Score: 1

It's like a student cheating on his homework...

No, it's not. This isn't homework or a test.

To be fair, Frosty, that would be why he said "like" and not "exactly the same as"

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Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Re:Cheating? by igreaterthanu · 2011-02-01 12:01 · Score: 1

you should pay people for it or make it specifically opt-in.
Opt-in you say? You mean like by clicking the "Improve My experience" checkbox the first time you run Internet Explorer 8? which states next to it that:

Help Microsoft improve your online experience...allowing us to collect additional information about...the searches you do, websites you visit.
All there in plain English and not hidden behind 100s of pages of EULA. RTFA.

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I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
Re:Cheating? by Lehk228 · 2011-02-01 12:23 · Score: 1

i think the right answer to the boat question is refer the customer to someone who is able to design and build a boat, i assume it is a "scope of project" quiz

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Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Re:Cheating? by iserlohn · 2011-02-01 12:42 · Score: 1

Did you even read the article? They're doing specifically that (screen-scraping, albeit indirectly).

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:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Re:Cheating? by Frosty+Piss · 2011-02-01 12:48 · Score: 1

To be fair, Nick, it's not at all like a test or homework. That's why "like" is incorrect.

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If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Re:Cheating? by NickFortune · 2011-02-01 13:02 · Score: 1

To be fair, Nick, it's not at all like a test or homework. That's why "like" is incorrect.

This may be so, but I think you need to make a bit more effort to demonstrate why two cases are insufficiently alike. You can't dismiss every comparison made in an argument simply by pointing out that the two items being compared are not in fact identical.
To be fair again, I do happen to think that the term "cheating" is not particularly helpful in this case. There are more interesting questions to be asked. Still, if you're going to address the issue of cheating, at least put a little effort into it.

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Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 13:11 · Score: 0

Instead of making a list of things you should do, you should have asked questions... who will be using the boat? is it a real boat or a remote control boat? will it be used for fishing? is it a pleasure boat? how many passengers need to be on it? Only after gathering as much information about the requirements should you have gone on to make a list of things you would do. You should read "How would you move Mt. Fuji" to understand how you went wrong in the interview.
Re:Cheating? by Grishnakh · 2011-02-01 13:50 · Score: 1

The purpose of a search engine is to provide search results that match the user's desire for information. What Bing are doing is compatible with this purpose.

No, it's not. Instead of doing their own work to find the information the user wants, they look to see what someone else provides, and give them that. It's just a cheap copy.

Cheap copies make sense in some markets. For instance, suppose you want a Lamborghini, but you can't afford $300k for a car, but someone else is making a car that looks like it, but only costs $30k, but it isn't as fast or as well-built. That might be worth it to you. Or, suppose you want a pair of dress pants. You could buy some Armani pants for $$$$, but you don't want to spend all that money, and this dress suit is only so you can attend a wedding, something which you do on average once in 25 years (this is Slashdot, after all, not many of your friends are married!). So instead of the Armani pants, you get some cheap copy that's made in China, and it's fine because they look good enough, didn't cost much, and are probably never going to be worn again.

For search engines, they don't make any sense at all. You don't pay anything to use Bing or Google, they're free for users. The only cost is your time. So if Bing is shamelessly copying Google's results, then what's the point in bothering with Bing? Why not just use Google? Obviously, Google is better than Bing if Bing has to resort to copying them.

Now I'm not saying there's anything morally wrong with their actions, since after all, Google gives its results away for free. But why should I bother wasting my time with Bing, if they're only giving me the same results as Google? Or worse, they're giving me the results that Google would have given me a couple weeks ago, whereas a true Google search will give me the most up-to-date information? What is the "value added" (to borrow some business-speak) of Bing? Bing's strategy is just plain stupid.
Re:Cheating? by Kagetsuki · 2011-02-01 14:03 · Score: 1

I've seen search engines that just do searches on all the major engines and then reorganize the results. One of them has been around forever, for some reason it's called "Dogpile". I'd say this is a good move for Bing, but they shouldn't just focus on Google they should also be hashing results from other engines (to the extent they legally can). And let's face it, Bing gives absolutely terrible results in a disordered format - they should try anything they can to improve.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 14:03 · Score: 0

It doesn't make any difference if it's a test, a homework or else: the behaviour is the same. Microsoft makes theirs the reasoning of Google to identify the results to show to the user.
Re:Cheating? by Grishnakh · 2011-02-01 14:07 · Score: 1

Either that, or buy one from someone who does. Many of MS's flagship products aren't even their own, and were purchased from elsewhere (buyouts, etc.): SQL Server, Excel, Halo, etc.
Re:Cheating? by pedantic+bore · 2011-02-01 14:18 · Score: 1

They're accused of screen scraping, but the evidence is coincidental at best. They do a search on a misspelled search term, and note that Bing corrects the search term in the same way as Google. It's also the same correction done by Wikipedia, and Teoma, and Ask.com. So, why doesn't Google mention all of these other sites? Maybe because Bing is actually nibbling at their heels, and the other sites are not?

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Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Re:Cheating? by mywhitewolf · 2011-02-01 14:25 · Score: 1

i doubt they can use Google services without adhering to the terms of service which would SURELY cover commercial use of the google results "product".
Re:Cheating? by Kagetsuki · 2011-02-01 14:27 · Score: 1

They are no less guilty of learning by imitation than any other country or individual - copying something that works is an important part of figuring out how it works and once you know how it works you can improve or modify it. It's kind of a dirty way to learn for sure, but if nobody did it we most certainly wouldn't have such advanced technology today.

I'm also surprised you didn't mention Korea - many products from Korea are so identical they are not allowed to be imported or sold in quite a few countries. Hyundai actually started out by licensing car designs from Japan, then altered them just enough that they could drop the license and still make basically the same car. Don't even get me started on Samsung - Samsung products aren't even sold in quite a few countries due to blatant copyright infringement. The funny thing is Korean products are copied like crazy in China and there have been numerous cases where Korean companies will localize and release a product in China [with a short lag after the Korean release] only to find the market has already been flooded copies. Don't even try to use the word "copyright" here - Korean courts ignore or throw out copyright cases and the Chinese basically don't have any copyright law or recognition of the concept at all.
Re:Cheating? by rtb61 · 2011-02-01 14:38 · Score: 2

Pretty much copyrights infringement. Googles search engine can be considered to be a body of work, whilst any individual query can be considered to be fair use. However an attempt to replicate the body of work to create another search engine of equal efficacy would have to be copyright infringement.
M$ copyright lawyers and management should be fully aware of this, as of course they are the ass hats of greed when it comes to their copyrights, patents and trademarks, claiming ownership of everything and routinely being caught of for cheating.
So 'BUSTED', whether google sues or not their choice but it would be funny to force M$ to spend millions of dollars advertising that Bing's search qualities are based upon Google's search engine and that Google provides better search outcomes ;D.

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Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:Cheating? by MightyYar · 2011-02-01 14:49 · Score: 1

All there in plain English and not hidden behind 100s of pages of EULA. RTFA.
That's great, except that IE is not the culprit - it is the Bing Toolbar. Having never installed that little gem, I don't really know if it has the same option. Googling around seems to indicate it does. I'd like to point out that MS has a habit of checking this by default, and most users don't install it - the OEM does.
So perhaps some of my disappointment should lie with the vendors... while true that MS pays them to install what amounts to spyware, they didn't have to actually do it.

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Re:Cheating? by AK+Marc · 2011-02-01 14:56 · Score: 1

You need a license to use copyrighted material. If they grant a license for personal use, but not for commercial use, then you did view their copyrighted material without a license and it is a copyright issue.

I'm not asserting that's a good or bad thing, but that's an argument that's been used in court and, to my knowledge, has won and has never lost.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:Cheating? by Ferzerp · 2011-02-01 15:09 · Score: 1

No because you're just incorrect. Google purposefully seeded information in to bing through the toolbar. They could have done the same with other web pages, but chose their search engine to spin it and make people assume exactly what you have.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Re:Cheating? by BLAG-blast · 2011-02-01 15:38 · Score: 1

Eh, what? Can you explain "purposefully seeded information" and "could have done the same with other web pages"? I don't get your point, or understand what you are trying to claim (other than Google did something bad, but I am not sure what).
Note, my response is a simplified answer to the "how could they have done that" question posed earlier. I am not claiming that this is what happened, just offering a possible answer to somebody's question.

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M0571y H@rml355.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 15:54 · Score: 0

I see it as the user, authorizing Bing to monitor its click throughs compared to search terms.
Re:Cheating? by harlows_monkeys · 2011-02-01 16:11 · Score: 1

It's cheating because instead of generating good search results, they look at someone else's search results and output those.
Except that is not what they are doing. Their toolbar notices that someone searched for $search_term and then went to $site. It sends this information to Bing, which treats it as an indication that the user believes that $site has information relevant to $search_term. This goes into their page ranking algorithm, along with a large number of other facts they know about $site, and tends to slightly raise the position of $site in searches for $search_term.
Microsoft has not kept this secret. People have known that this is an input to their ranking for years.
Google makes it sound like they somehow have targeted Google and are actually grabbing Google's results. In reality, this probably works for anything done in the search field in IE, regardless of what search provider. It could also be done for any page, not just search results pages, by looking at tags on the URL to look for common search related tags. For instance, if you are on a page whose query string includes q=homoerotic+regurgitation, and you follow a link from that site to some other page, it is a reasonable guess that the page you go to has something to do with homoerotic regurgitation, and they could use that to influence that page's position in Bing searches for homoerotic regurgitation.
There's no cheating here. The only thing that might be questionable is whether or not user's have really consented to having their clicking used to help rate pages for search. They are told about this in the agreements they are supposed to have read, but most people just click through those.
Re:Cheating? by vrythmax · 2011-02-01 17:50 · Score: 0

No, Microsoft trusts Google's users more than their own.
Re:Cheating? by kdemetter · 2011-02-01 18:14 · Score: 1

"5.5 Unless you have been specifically permitted to do so in a separate agreement with Google, you agree that you will not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade or resell the Services for any purpose. "
I'm not sure if 'search results' , are considered a service though .

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Slipping shoelaces ?
Re:Cheating? by wunderbus · 2011-02-01 18:41 · Score: 1

No, it's not. This isn't homework or a test.
When Forrest Gump said, "Life is like a box of chocolates," I imagine you stormed out of the theater.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 19:03 · Score: 0

you've nailed the correct answer - how can i build a boat? hire ppl who know how ... how do i do it faster ? higher people who can take the fastest boat apart reverse engineer and claim they just made the fastest boat - extra points if the latter work was done in china .. you know like the trains ...
_Kay
Re:Cheating? by im_thatoneguy · 2011-02-01 19:10 · Score: 1

"How it was intended" implies sentience and intelligence. Neither Google nor Bing I imagine are that smart when crawling the web.
Web crawlers are finely tuned applications designed to find relationships between distinct and unique words and links. I would think that a web crawler analyzing your browsing would have to be explicitly told *not* to crawl Google searches.
If Google really wanted to see if Bing was "cheating" it should have hosted a new unique domain and mixed up its CSS so that it wasn't "Google" and repeated the tests.
It should also be noted that only 6% of the honey-pots returned anything. So if Bing is intentionally stealing search results and not just blindly finding relationships between URLs and links clicked--I would expect a better return.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 19:18 · Score: 0

You failed the interview because you assumed you could build a boat just because the customer asked for one.
Imagine if you were requested to test the security of a protocol. Your manager would expect you to let him know if you can't do the job. In your interview you basically said that you'd do your best job at testing it, and not let your manager know that you didn't know how, nor would you ask for assistance, or do research on how to do it properly.
Not all research is "cheating".
Re:Cheating? by ppanon · 2011-02-01 19:36 · Score: 1

Yes, search results for a misspelling was the first clue that something might be happening. But if you read farther you would read that Google created results for complete nonsense words that were not just a misspelling, then seeded it into a couple of Microsoft browser tools, and then noticed that those artificially generated nonsense-search-term/result associations showed up in Bing.
Now the reason why Google would probably (no longer?) use search choice URL to affect result rankings is because there are many people out there who want to game Google's ranking algorithm to climb higher in search results for search terms and this approach would be far too easy to exploit. All you would need to do is pay somebody with a botnet to send data streams to Google servers to make it look like each of those bots was doing legitimate searches and selecting the desired site to affect the results. Google could also do a similar thing to poison Bing's results by looking for long tail search terms, picking very poor results for those terms, and then paying for someone's bots to send fake data to Microsoft's servers to make it look like the Bing toolbar or Suggested Sites was returning legitimate selections. At least Google could do that if it wasn't for the "Do no Evil" mission statement. I hold some doubt that Microsoft would be as restrained if the roles were reversed.

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Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Re:Cheating? by Kit+Kat100 · 2011-02-01 19:38 · Score: 1

No, but I can guarantee that Bing does.
Re:Cheating? by Panoptes · 2011-02-01 20:01 · Score: 1

How on earth was this trite (and questionable) analogy awarded a score of 5 for insight?
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 20:16 · Score: 0

Yeah, I'm sure you're right. They couldn't have possibly thought you weren't qualified. They simply wanted to know if you knew how to cheat and steal.
No, wait. You probably just weren't qualified.
"How do you do X?" "I don't know!" "Great, you're hired!"
Re:Cheating? by noidentity · 2011-02-01 20:36 · Score: 1

Dude, really? On my only interview I got with a guy from Microsoft I was asked if I knew how to build a boat, when I said no, he said how would I do to build a boat for a customer.

I would start by not trying to build the customer a boat, since I am not experienced in that. Even if I managed to build one, it would be of poor quality. Assuming I was employed by the customer to get him the things he asked for, I would find his needs for the boat and look at what was available for purchase.
Re:Cheating? by peterbye · 2011-02-01 20:37 · Score: 1

repackaging google search results wold be little different then copying pages from several novels in order to create your own wouldn't it?
That would be plagiarism which (in the UK at least) is a separate offence to copyright infringement.
Re:Cheating? by mwvdlee · 2011-02-01 20:46 · Score: 1

Not exactly illegal, but http://www.google.com/robots.txt specifies all search result pages as disallowed for all robots.

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Re:Cheating? by bWareiWare.co.uk · 2011-02-01 21:05 · Score: 1

Including extra data in their calculations dose not depend on that data being better then their results. If search engines could only provide results which where the mean relevance of the data they were indexing they wouldn't be very useful.
Re:Cheating? by Sparrow1492 · 2011-02-01 21:07 · Score: 1

No one seems to have read the article.
You must be new here.
Re:Cheating? by wunderbus · 2011-02-01 21:25 · Score: 1

Jesus. No one can read analogies. Let me break it down:
"__A__ is like __B__ (<-- unclear, leaves the listener waiting for more). __Explanation__."
Did you ever hear a joke beginning with, "I like my women like I like my coffee..." ?
The first sentence of the analogy was just a lead-in. The second sentence, "It will only work as long as the smart kid sticks around." explained it. I can't believe I'm typing this.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 21:28 · Score: 0

It's cheating because instead of generating good search results, they look at someone else's search results and output those.
No, they don't. So far as I can tell, they hear "Bing toolbar user clicked on link X with a referrer URL including 'search' and 'q=someSearchTerm' and this surrounding link text", and go Hmm, our user clicked on a link; that means he thinks it's a relevant link. Relevance++."
The rest is a brouhaha because there are some rare terms where clicks on Google search results links are the only clicks or links that are out there, and so of course they are the only ones Bing hears about.
Re:Cheating? by Sparrow1492 · 2011-02-01 21:30 · Score: 1

No one seems to have read the article.
You must be new here.
Re:Cheating? by sincewhen · 2011-02-01 22:21 · Score: 1

Look Frosty Piss, you've done this "Bad analogy" thing twice now, so here's a final one for you.
It's like a company checks how well a competitor's product works and tries to use that information to improve their own product.

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-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Re:Cheating? by owlet · 2011-02-01 22:53 · Score: 1

Mod parent up. Sounds to me, that IE+Bingbar just recognizes the use of _a_ search engine and adds relevance to the clicked results.
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 22:54 · Score: 0

You seem to have latched onto the irrelevant part. For the results, it doesn't really matter whether this is legal or moral. The important point was, "this will only work as long as Google does the work for Bing".
Re:Cheating? by Ferzerp · 2011-02-02 02:29 · Score: 1

They set up these bogus searches, and then sent people home to install the Bing toolbar (which explicitly collects browsing data to feed data to the search engine) and had them repeatedly hit these searches on Google (to submit a bogus association of that term to Bing). They in no way show that Google is targeted for anything. To test that, they would have to craft a similar page that would feed bogus data to bing via the toolbar and demonstate that in an equal situation, the link did not start appearing in Bing.
If millions of people link the word cars with Ford based on their browsing habits and suddenly google starts trying to linkt he word cars with Monsanto or some other unrelated company, it won't matter. However, when you take a unique string of letters, there is no other data available to show that the data is bad, so it was easy to poison the search DB and create an association of a given string with whatever they wanted to. The chose to use their search engine for the web pages accessed to create this link in order to be able to make these specious claims.
If their goal was to reverse engineer the way that the Bing toolbar data is used, they would have tried using other pages to do the same type of poisoning. If it only happened with the google search page, they would have a little bit of "proof". If it happened with any similar page they set up, it would show that the toolbar data is just aggregating traffic data and making connections between terms on a page and where they link to based on the links followed (wow, sounds a lot like how a sane search engine would collect data if the users allowed the click data to be collected) Their goal was FUD, and FUD by anyone is wrong. If I, in 5 minutes, can devise a more accurate way to test it, can you honestly say that the folks at Google didn't consider that this is very likely a totally generallized algorithm?
Re:Cheating? by cayenne8 · 2011-02-02 02:39 · Score: 1

"Spoken like someone who stole millions of dollars in potential profit..."
Not yet...but working on it.

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Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Re:Cheating? by cayenne8 · 2011-02-02 03:07 · Score: 1

"Pretty much copyrights infringement. Googles search engine can be considered to be a body of work, whilst any individual query can be considered to be fair use. However an attempt to replicate the body of work to create another search engine of equal efficacy would have to be copyright infringement. "
Well, I'm not sure. From what I've been led to understand...a list of facts, is not copyrightable, which is what a search engine presents to you.
The algorithms behind the scene that Google uses, sure those are likely copyrighted/patented etc....
And even with the algorithms, I'm guessing that they likely could be reversed engineered....maybe just by close study of the search results...and I'm guessing doing that *might* not be actionable, but I'm not sure about that last one.

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Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Re:Cheating? by j00r0m4nc3r · 2011-02-02 03:22 · Score: 1

It is slimy, though.
Microsoft has finally stooped to doing slimy things?! Say it isn't so. And they were such a jewel of honor and respectability...
Re:Cheating? by NickFortune · 2011-02-02 04:00 · Score: 1

Jesus. No one can read analogies. Let me break it down:

Hey, don't tell me, tell Frosty.
I just get irritated when someone thinks they can derail an analogy by pointing out that the two things under consideration are not the same thing - as if there'd be any point in an analogy if both items were the same.

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Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Re:Cheating? by Skreems · 2011-02-02 04:47 · Score: 1

And why is that cheating? Sounds like simple observance in an effort to get improve results.
It is just observing, but it's observing your competitors. To put it another way, if Google for some reason shut down tomorrow, a portion of Bing's relevance improvement would cease immediately. That strikes me as a sign of something dishonest.

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The Urban Hippie
Re:Cheating? by kdemetter · 2011-02-02 04:52 · Score: 1

where does the string come from?
Somebody typed the word into a Bing query entry box and hit submit. I.e.: A person searches for a term, and if Bing doesn't have any results for that term, then it goes to google.com, performs a search for the same term and returns those results. Does that help?
So , if i understand it correctly , google could add a search result for that word, mapping it to one specific result.
Then , since google added it , they know the word , so they can type the word into the bing toolbar , and see if this turns up their result. Brilliant.

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Slipping shoelaces ?
Re:Cheating? by sumdumass · 2011-02-02 05:49 · Score: 1

In the US, plagiarism is a means or method of copyright violation. It's typically head of more in an academic environment and with ethics, but according to most definitions, to plagiarize means to copy anthers work, concept or ideas and present it as your own. Sure, they use different words, but it boils down to the same.
Copyright is so broad in the US, that the copying and distribution of someone else' works is almost alway covered by it. There are exceptions to copyright violations which give rise to fair use. That would be excluded from copyright as well would something in the public domain (no valid copyright). So yes, while plagiarism could be different from copyright, I'm not sure I am seeing anything here that would make this situation different.
Re:Cheating? by BLAG-blast · 2011-02-02 07:03 · Score: 1

Ah, so when the Bing toolbar is installed, it indexes every page and link the user visits, to the point that if a couple of users are on a page with a random character string and link on a link it will update the Bing search engine/indexes. If so it would seem that Bing's index would be polluted with spam links, other people are spending a lot more time trying to get links into Bing than Google is. And as for your example with ford, this doesn't seem valid, since Bing already has index entries for ford (and other normal/popular terms), this is about what bing does when it doesn't have any results.
This certainly doesn't look like FUD from google's part, it does seem kind of clever of MS, but also seems rather questionable from a moral point of view, I doubt it's illegal like some people where claiming.
Cheeers!

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M0571y H@rml355.
Re:Cheating? by Phoghat · 2011-02-02 07:30 · Score: 1

I Am Shocked! Shocked I Say!

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Re:Cheating? by Ferzerp · 2011-02-02 09:35 · Score: 1

Of course you can feed it spam, but you will be overwhelmed by real traffic most likely so that your spam never breaks the first few pages.
Re:Cheating? by rtb61 · 2011-02-02 12:18 · Score: 1

The arrangement of a list of "not facts" by most likely search results based upon user profile (from simple IP adress location to a more detailed profile). Facts in the case of search query results would be a completely random output of little relevance to the user, the arrangement, the order of results, the order of likely search results, which results comes up first and on the first pages, represent a body of work. How that body of work is produced is arbitrary.
Search results can not really be called facts, they are the results of complex data base and it's associated algorithm, as the user does not know the algorithm nor the structure of the database the output is more fuzzy logic than factual output. What M$ is likely cheating on is the elimination of 'factually correct' but bad ass hat search optimised web sites.

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Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 15:21 · Score: 0

Its not exactly copying search results - they're see which of google's results were relevant enough for the user to click on them. If they just wanted to scrape google's search results there are easier ways to do this.
Re:Cheating? by wunderbus · 2011-02-02 18:10 · Score: 1

Sorry. You're right, I replied to the wrong comment. :(
Re:Cheating? by ajs · 2011-02-02 20:59 · Score: 1

It makes perfect sense for a search engine to look for things like this to help it decide what is relevant and what isn't.
No, it doesn't.
Search engines are for aggregating data from the Web. Search engines themselves hold only the data that they gathered and the data injected by their search algorithms (e.g. what links they think are most relevant). What Google is pointing out is that they've observed a long-term trend of Google's top results showing up on top of Bing's top results, even when that didn't make sense (e.g. the typo example that they give that started the whole thing). So, what Microsoft is indexing isn't relevance, it's just Google's weightings.

Google also looks at the links people click on in their results.
Google has the context to understand why those links are there in the first place, as evidenced by the sting, in which the clicks were clearly worse than useless. Also, Google does record clicks on some links by masking random links in their results with a redirect link through Google, but they use that data very sparingly as any SEO company can tell you, much to their frustration.

It isn't exactly a stretch to assume that every search engine would also want to know which links people are clicking on other search engines.
As evidenced by this result, it's actually worse than useless. It exposes you to poisoning of your data set by your competitors and it exposes you to public shaming.

I don't see the problem, it makes all of their results more relevant. That's not really a bad thing.
Only in cases where Google is more correct than Bing, and given the weight that Microsoft is applying to these links (I refer you to the Google article for more detail on the general population of results), we are left with very little option other than to assume that's an awful lot of the cases.

Can you guarantee that the Google toolbar doesn't collect similar information if you go to Yahoo or Bing and do a search there?
No one can make such a guarantee other than Google, obviously, and if you RTFA, you'll find that they've done just that. Any other questions?
Re:Cheating? by ajs · 2011-02-02 21:12 · Score: 1

It is cheating if you have an OS monopoly and a browser that a very large piece of the internet-users use, while Yahoo and Ask, .... don't have that advantage.
While I think Google is in the right, here, and Microsoft deserves the egg they have on their face, the above is not a fair statement.
1) Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly any longer. To consider them a monopoly, you have to do some very bad math and ignore some very, very large market segments. Fact of the matter is, they're just the largest desktop operating system, and even that edge is shrinking and there are more market segments where that isn't true than ever before. Being the largest competitor does not make one a monopoly. If you look at the entire domain of "processors that run operating systems," Microsoft is actually hurting really badly.
2) Google isn't saying that the problem is Microsoft using information about Google searches, per se. Their concern is that Microsoft doesn't understand why they would want to use those results... they're just blindly saying, "this result is the best because Google says so." That's just re-selling Google's results. If Microsoft used search results that their users generated as a small weight in already-determined result sets for which Microsoft already had a pretty good idea of what was relevant, then I think Google's reaction would have been much more restrained.
3) The funny thing is that Microsoft HAS to change this. Right now, they're putting such a large weight on Google results that they're exposing themselves to all sorts of really absurd abuse by SEOs who will destroy their relevance, given half a chance. In fact, I'd expect Microsoft's results to become much less relevant in the coming weeks unless they fix this problem immediately.
Re:Cheating? by BasilBrush · 2011-02-03 01:43 · Score: 1

You mean they could have done the same with other search engines, not just Google. That's true. Microsoft's mechanism for theft of search angine results will work just as well no matter what competitor users select to search with. It's just that Google are obviously more concerned with theft of their results than others.
Think about it. The only reason for this technology is for Microsoft to steal other companies results. If they only wanted to know what link people click on after a search in Bing, then they wouldn't need to build that into a search bar. The click on the Bing results page would already give them that information.
Re:Cheating? by BasilBrush · 2011-02-03 01:48 · Score: 1

They in no way show that Google is targeted for anything. To test that, they would have to craft a similar page that would feed bogus data to bing via the toolbar and demonstate that in an equal situation, the link did not start appearing in Bing.
You'r saying this isn't wrong because Microsoft are stealing results from every other search engine rather than just from Google's search engine?
So if someone copies their homework from a variety of different classmates that is OK, but if they only copied from one that would be wrong?
Re:Cheating? by BasilBrush · 2011-02-03 02:04 · Score: 1

Not so. The data is collected through entries in the IE toolbar and the subsequent click on a link. That data will be added in to the Bing database. It happen just the same for all searches.
However, for ordinary searches, the weight of a few Google employees doing this wouldn't be very big, and so the result would be buried deep down the list. In order to generate clear evidence Google created search terms for which Bing didn't previously have any results.
This isn't a fall back when Bing doesn't have any other results. This is a systematic stealing of data for every search term entered in IE toolbar.
Re:Cheating? by BasilBrush · 2011-02-03 02:07 · Score: 1

You stopped reading the article too early. This isn't about spelling corrections/suggestions. That was merely what gave Google the first clue that Microsoft was copying them. They then went out to prove that actual copy of results was happening. And that proof is conclusive.
Re:Cheating? by BasilBrush · 2011-02-03 02:19 · Score: 1

I'm sure it isn't illegal, otherwise Google would be suing Microsoft for it. Instead they are responding to the immorality of it by shaming Microsoft by revealing to the tech world how they are cheating.
Re:Cheating? by AmiMoJo · 2011-02-03 04:16 · Score: 1

The purpose of a search engine is to provide search results that match the user's desire for information.
The purpose of a search engine is to make money. If one company copy/pasted text from another's sale brochure into their own they would be accused of plagiarism.
Copyright and patent laws are designed to stop that kind of thing. I'm not saying it's outright wrong, in fact it works well in some industries like fashion, music, movies and TV.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Cheating? by amicusNYCL · 2011-02-03 04:56 · Score: 1

Search engines themselves hold only the data that they gathered and the data injected by their search algorithms (e.g. what links they think are most relevant).
That's right. And this data coming from Google's site is part of Bing's data set.

So, what Microsoft is indexing isn't relevance, it's just Google's weightings.
It's more accurate to say that what Google thinks is relevant is part of the weight that Bing gives certain results. I would also assume that the results people actually click on are another point of data for Bing.

It exposes you to poisoning of your data set by your competitors
Only if they're actively trying to poison you. If Google wasn't testing bogus searches for the purpose of seeing if they showed up in Bing, then they wouldn't show up in Bing. In other words, if Google was doing things normally then there wouldn't be a problem. And again, these results are just one more point of data for Bing, there's nothing to indicate that Google results all of a sudden shoot to the top of any results page on Bing. Using nonsense searches isn't a good indication for that because the only results at all are what Google manually added to their database.

and it exposes you to public shaming.
Something tells me that Microsoft has a pretty thick skin.

Only in cases where Google is more correct than Bing
I think you're making the assumption, correct or not, that results scraped from Google are considered 100% relevant by Bing. I think it's far more likely that the results coming from Google are given a certain weight, probably higher than that of data scraped by other methods, but not necessarily 100%. It's just another data point.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Cheating? by Celery+Kills · 2011-02-03 12:39 · Score: 1

If you look at the America's Cup racing yachts, each competitor takes pictures, videos and anything thing else they can from the winner (and even 2nd and 3rd place). They analyze it for the design improvements, some times they copy, some times just use it as an example. Every good engineer does this. People use code examples all the time as the foundation of their applications, if it's done correctly there is no plagerism, is just natural growth. Remember when a competitors make statements to others look bad, there is always an agenda... when the competitor is in business the agenda is $$$$, which makes is just more adverstising or hype or misdirection. Advancement does not just spring fully grown like Minerva from Jupiter's head (or ironically Athena from Zeus' head).
Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-05 06:46 · Score: 0

"Can you guarantee that the Google toolbar doesn't collect similar information if you go to Yahoo or Bing and do a search there?" uhmmm... what? how about you first show that it *does* ?

Terrible. by CannonballHead · 2011-02-01 05:36 · Score: 3, Funny

They should really reinvent the wheel. Copying Google's wheel isn't fair! ...

Re:Terrible. by DrDitto · 2011-02-01 05:39 · Score: 2

How many IE users realize that their Google searches/results are being sent to Microsoft for analysis? Not that Google doesn't analyze their own searches/results...but....WTF?
Re:Terrible. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:51 · Score: 0

How many IE users realize that their Google searches/results are being sent to Microsoft for analysis? Not that Google doesn't analyze their own searches/results...but....WTF?
When you install Bing Toolbar, it is spelled out that Microsoft will use data collected on your search results to improve the Bing search engine. If users aren't aware when they sign off on the Ts and Cs, then shame on them.
Re:Terrible. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:52 · Score: 0

How many IE users care?
Re:Terrible. by EasyTarget · 2011-02-01 06:06 · Score: 1

Does it clearly state that it collects -all- search results; including results for other search providers?
If it does not; then it is a classic wonks 'lie by omission'; done because they know that normal people (eg. excepting the deeply paranoid and /. trolls) would assume that they looked at their own results and kept their filthy thieving hands out of data not specific to their specific product (bing).
There is probably a good car analogy in this but I cant think of it..

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"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Re:Terrible. by undecim · 2011-02-01 06:10 · Score: 1

They are profiting from Google's wheel, and taking from their profits, when Google is the one that puts and continues to put effort into improving their search results. In fact, Microsoft specifically started Bing to compete with Google, and on top of that, MS is using Google's work to do it.

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The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.
Re:Terrible. by ShavedOrangutan · 2011-02-01 06:40 · Score: 1

How many IE users realize that their Google searches/results are being sent to Microsoft for analysis? Not that Google doesn't analyze their own searches/results...but....WTF?
A lot more people have the Google toolbar.

Google should use this to send false results to Microsoft.

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Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
Re:Terrible. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:31 · Score: 0

This isn't reinventing the wheel, this is just taking a picture of someone's wheel and claiming you invented it.
To not reinvent the wheel would be to use knowledge of Google's algorithm to make an improved algorithm, but making an algorithm to use knowledge of Google is kinda pathetic.
Re:Terrible. by 517714 · 2011-02-01 08:01 · Score: 1

The question is whether the end user has the legal right to disclose to Microsoft the results provided by Google. Isn't this corporate espionage in tiny increments?
The MS EULA should say "You agree to act as a corporate spy for Microsoft by providing information from Microsoft competitors which was derived through their proprietary processes".

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The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Re:Terrible. by AmberBlackCat · 2011-02-01 08:19 · Score: 1

How many Firefox and Opera users realize whatever they type in the address bar goes through Google? How many android phone users realize their entire contact list will be sent to Google?
Re:Terrible. by GameboyRMH · 2011-02-01 08:29 · Score: 1

That's nothing, older versions of IE would redirect all searches through Microsoft OUT OF THE BOX, regardless of what your search provider setting was. IE6 and older did this IIRC.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=305908

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"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel

Not that suprising. by wideBlueSkies · 2011-02-01 05:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

I don't expect any mod points for this post... but I'll just say that I'm not surprised by this. Since the launch of Bing, I've kind of questioned how MSFT could have come up with a 'superior' search engine so quickly. Their second (at least) attempt since 2000.....

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Huh?

Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:44 · Score: 0

This reminds me of Climategate - much ado about nothing, but enemies of AGW (or Microsoft) will pretend it's some huge deal.
Microsoft has piles of money and hires the best Ph.Ds money can buy, why would you wonder how they can come up with a 'superior' search engine?
Re:Not that suprising. by Runaway1956 · 2011-02-01 05:50 · Score: 1

A molehill doesn't have to be a huge thing to indicate that there are moles around. And, this Bing thing doesn't have to be a big thing either. It only proves that Microsoft resorts to unethical measures at the earliest opportunity. Phht. Thieves are thieves - it's not a big thing at all. In fact, thieves are mostly petty, and common.

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"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:52 · Score: 1

But climate gate WAS something. Science consists of observable phenomena, and a theories on what that would mean, and experiments that test that theory with more observable phenomena. When the gatekeepers of climate change are shown to actively punish and censor those who do not agree with their findings, control what journals can publish, stone wall others from being able to have the data (related to observable phenomena) to be able to duplicate what they have found. Then even going beyond this and destroying that data and sticking with "you will just have to believe us." Then that is not science.
Science can stand up to scrutiny. What was done there was not science.
At the very least BING should say "BING powered by Microsoft AND Google"
Re:Not that suprising. by wideBlueSkies · 2011-02-01 05:59 · Score: 0

Right. And it's not a big thing either when a thief tries to resell stolen wares.
But nevertheless it does warrant being called out, so the world can see the thief for what he is.

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Huh?
Re:Not that suprising. by tzhuge · 2011-02-01 06:13 · Score: 0, Troll

This is just stupid... their 'proof' is that they searched and clicked results on Google using Internet Explorer, and with Suggested Search and Bing Toolbar activated... wtf. So Bing Toolbar is collecting information to improve Bing Search... shocking.
Why didn't they do this with Bing Search, then accuse MS of 'cheating' using Bing results. This is just braindead stupid; so ridiculously childish.
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:22 · Score: 0

Love the namecalling. It really strenghtens your argument. Really.
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:25 · Score: 0

Or, y'know, like TFA says, it could be because Google seeded fake results to suspected Bing drones and saw them show up as results from Bing, but please, don't let facts or reality interrupt your fanboy rage. I'm certain your own bile tastes great as it rises up your throat more and more the angrier you get. And hey, somebody's gotta support the dinosaurs, right? Rage with the machine, brother!
Re:Not that suprising. by fusiongyro · 2011-02-01 06:28 · Score: 3, Informative

If you actually read the article, what you'd find is that they actually put fake search results into Google's database associated with random strings of characters. They searched for these strings on Bing and got no results, then searched for these strings on Google from IE and went back to Bing, and whaddayaknow, there were the results. This is like finding out that McDonalds got the Big Mac you're eating from the Burger King across the street in a different box.
All search engine business works by selling ads by usage. Usage is correlated to search result relevance. If Bing is a shell on top of Google, but selling their own ads rather than Google's, it's obviously a violation of Google's terms-of-service at least, if not breaking other laws about theft of intellectual property. Google doesn't maintain their algorithms and massive databases so that Bing can piggyback on them without paying for it.
Re:Not that suprising. by tzhuge · 2011-02-01 06:29 · Score: 1

"When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing."
This is from the source. Bing Toolbar is probably collecting user behavior. It's not necessarily being prioritized because it is the top result on Google, it is probably being prioritized because the monitored users actually clicked on those results. Maybe MS is just monitoring Google directly; I wouldn't be that surprised, but this story is pure troll.
Re:Not that suprising. by bluefoxlucid · 2011-02-01 06:33 · Score: 1

Microsoft has piles of money and hires the best Ph.Ds money can buy, why would you wonder how they can come up with a 'superior' search engine?
Perhaps because Google did something truly creative; patented it; got fucking rich; then started hiring people to improve on their work? Basically, "Because Google is 99.7% likely to think of it first, since they expend 99.9% of their effort on sorting and analyzing data for various reasons, and can apply ALL that research to search engines for 1% of additional effort."
It's like if the oil companies started funding car and aerospace (Boeng) companies with fucking bazillions of cash, trying to build advanced rocket engine designs. Sure these are well-funded mechanical engineering firms that deal in all kinds of aerodynamics (what, you think a Porsche is a brick with a giant engine and nice suspension? lol); but NASA has been doing this forever, and still has decent funding, no business case needed (almost), etc. I'm sorry, you're competing with "Somebody god damn well has spent forever trying to do this, you're not going to magically make new shit up because you're both rich and smart."

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Support my political activism on Patreon.
Re:Not that suprising. by purpledinoz · 2011-02-01 06:37 · Score: 1

I have tried Bing a couple of times when I had a hard time finding something on Google. I noticed that the results were very similar or almost the same. So I don't even bother using Bing anymore... This would explain my observations though.
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:49 · Score: 0

They are desperate to win here. Their code (in general) has been sukky since day 1. Google is making real cash every day. Android is hammering their phone offering. Linux has had the potential to hammer their desktop offerings. Samba 4 will accelerate this, along with the wide-open office formats available on Linux. Pushing data to the cloud means proprietary file formats die (the corral fence now has a horizon to horizon gaping hole in it). Google has eaten search up. By M$'s own accounting, Bing runs at a loss of $500 million per quarter. It got a bit of action at the beginning, but now only the fanboidom use it. Googlle is a verb. Bing is the sound going off in shareholders heads when they read the quarterly balance sheet: $500 million. Thats a lot of earnings, gone. But I don't mind. I don't mind that XBox drained a billion of their dollars since its launch either. And I wouldn't mind if Google tossed them a few data grenades to wreck their output.
Re:Not that suprising. by Tiger4 · 2011-02-01 06:53 · Score: 1

What was practiced there was Science as it is practiced in the real world, with grants, tenures, and livelyhoods at stake. This isn't the fairytale, schoolbook, made-for-TV-movie world that we were raised on, where everything a scientist does is only for the most altruistic of motives, with no thought to any other consideration.
Come on, half the people on slashdot can claim to be a Computer Scientist, but look at decison making around here. And if scientists didn't care about politics, the Nazis would have had the A-bomb, probably in the mid-30s. Time to wake up to reality.

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Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Re:Not that suprising. by wideBlueSkies · 2011-02-01 06:54 · Score: 1

>>And I wouldn't mind if Google tossed them a few data grenades to wreck their output.
I'm trying to think of a way to do this for Google... but just don't have the bandwidth personally to look at the Bing Toolbar's packets... would love if someone could publish a hack that sent crap results to Bing's database for each google search.
Like a search for "diapers: returns the google results for "kiddie-porn" to Bing. That kind of thing.

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Huh?
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:57 · Score: 0

You don't get it. They CLICKED the google results. So Microsoft got the information that users searching for hjshjkfsdhfdkfjhd click a specific page, so that page is relevant, even though the other data Bing had didn't seem to indicate so. Therefore, the new data ranks that page better than before and it appears on Bing search results!
User clicks are very elementary for improving search results. Bi(n)g deal!
Re:Not that suprising. by tzhuge · 2011-02-01 06:58 · Score: 1, Troll

Arg... I'm never going to get my point through the noise, so I'll just respond to you directly. The part that keeps getting omitted is that Google had its Bing tracked employees clicking on their fake result.
The accurate fast-food analogy is this: McDonalds creates a fake 'McRat Burger', then sends a group of its employees to Burger King to sign up for the King's Court Happy Club, part of which requires them to fill out surveys on fastfood habits (Bing Toolbar, and tracking). These employees are then told to consistently goto McDonalds and order the 'McRat Burger'. Burger King then receives survey results indicating that the 'McRat Burger' is hugely popular, and soon make the 'Rat Whopper Supreme' a top menu item. Now is that proof Burger King is copying McDonald's marketing data?
I'm not even saying MS isn't doing something wrong. My point is that this 'experiment' doesn't prove a thing, and to point the finger on this kind of evidence is extremely childish.
Re:Not that suprising. by digitig · 2011-02-01 07:38 · Score: 1

But climate gate WAS something. Science consists of observable phenomena, and a theories on what that would mean, and experiments that test that theory with more observable phenomena.
Correct.

When the gatekeepers of climate change are shown to actively punish and censor those who do not agree with their findings, control what journals can publish, stone wall others from being able to have the data (related to observable phenomena) to be able to duplicate what they have found. Then even going beyond this and destroying that data and sticking with "you will just have to believe us." Then that is not science.
Correct. But absolutely none of that happened in Climategate. All that happened was that some journalists didn't understand how they were reconciling two datasets -- specifically, that they were quite correctly preferring direct measurement to indirect measurement.

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Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:43 · Score: 0

That's not what happened.
The scientists were asked to make a graph for a presentation. The scientists did so, using two data sets (one from instruments and one using things like tree rings). The data sets disagreed at the tail end of the data so the scientists spliced the data (they offered to say what they did for the presentation but were told it was too much information for the audience). One of the scientists wrote some emails with the explanation of the whole thing in it and unfortunately used the words "trick" and "decline". Some climate change denialist got hold of the emails years later and posted them on his blog. A professional blogger picked up on the blog and pasted it all over his column, calling it "climategate". Professional blogger did no more research beyond the sensationalist headline he thought up.
The scientists then received dozens of freedom of information act requests in the space of one weekend, in what appears to have been a coordinated effort to make an impossible situation for the scientists. They could not comply with all of the requests in the mandated time because it was pretty...well...impossible. They did not try and "hide" the data. The data still exists so I have no idea where you heard that they destroyed it. That's just silly.
The data was used in science, the whole thing was simply about the tail end of a graph that had no importance and the data was dealt with in a professional and scientifically justified manner. Please find out about things like the "climategate" story before believing the crap printed in the media. It was always a non-story.
Re:Not that suprising. by Alex+Belits · 2011-02-01 07:53 · Score: 1

You forgot the part about search term not appearing anywhere other than the Google page.

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Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Re:Not that suprising. by mldi · 2011-02-01 08:09 · Score: 1

I just don't understand why Google doesn't turn this around for marketing purposes. "Our search is so good, other search engines have to use our results to compete."

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If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:17 · Score: 0

Clearly you didn't read the article carefully. They built a specific association between an obscure search (a random string, basically) and a specific, wholly unrelated website (e.g., searching for on Google QTHTHSADFS gets you to reddit.com, but only after they enabled their specific-association code). Then the SAME MATCH turns up on Bing. I.e., Bing is not "gathering data", it is simply using Google's results and presenting them as its own. Bing is a Google front-end. THAT is cheating.
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:48 · Score: 0

Though I applaud your effort, you do realize that you are trying to present facts to someone who clearly ignores facts, don't you?
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:19 · Score: 0

They've been doing exactly this for at least three years, even when it was Live Search.
We've worked with them on some things and they told us flat out that they were doing this. Nobody at MSN even had the decency to look embarrassed. We wanted their cash too much to laugh in their faces and mock them outrageously.
Anon for obvious reasons.
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:29 · Score: 0

That is because you don't get it. Here is how it is, using Internet Explorer & gumpf:
1 - Users search for a pre-defined random string in BING! No results returned.
2 - Users then search for SAME pre-defined random string in GOOGLE & CLICK TOP RESULT (remember, search in GOOGLE not BING). Results returned are fixed by the way.
3, Several days later Users then search for same pre-defined random string in BING and ... same GOOGLE results returned!
This indicates they were monitoring Googles results & clicks. No result in Bing to start with, but result is returned AFTER a successful search is accomplished in Google - in fact same result is returned!
Get it now?
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 10:05 · Score: 0

This indicates they were monitoring Googles results & clicks.
Google does not click. Users click.

User searches for X. User then clicks on fully legal URL Y and goes to that fully existing web page. Bing then associates X with Y because the Bing Toolbar reported this information to the mothership.

Get it now?
Most people seem to have gotten it a long time ago. You still don't seem to get it.
Re:Not that suprising. by ThePromenader · 2011-02-01 12:17 · Score: 1

[quote]The part that keeps getting omitted is that Google had its Bing-tracked employees clicking on their fake result.[/quote]
Yes, but ~how~ Bing got that result is yet another level on top of all that - basically, users with an MS browsers send 'search term/resulting click' info - from any and all search engine - to MS servers that filter the resulting data for query content that they present as their own, and just by coincidence, at the top of their own results. That is unethical.

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No, no sig. Really.

ThePromenader
Re:Not that suprising. by Ferzerp · 2011-02-01 15:22 · Score: 1

Which is exactly why when they fed the false data to bing via bing toolbar, it was easy to poison the results for it. There was no traffic data involving that term, and google generated a bunch of traffic for it. Suddenly the search engine sees the association of the nonsense word with the webpage and has no good data to compare it to because it's a unique string. Go figure... You seed the engine with bad data and it returns the bad data... They just used their search engine instead of some generic pages to be able to use this FUD line.
Re:Not that suprising. by Feinu · 2011-02-01 18:08 · Score: 1

Interesting trend: every time a post starts with "I don't expect any mod points for this post" or "I have karma to burn", it gets mod points.
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 20:12 · Score: 0

I honestly just assumed that the "superiority" was a simple matter of adding +, ( ), or "" to every search... then running it through Google.
Re:Not that suprising. by fusiongyro · 2011-02-01 20:28 · Score: 1

I see your point, and it is an important one. Technologically, Bing is not actively performing searches on Google and importing that data into their index. However, I don't think this technological distinction is particularly relevant, and while we probably should dissect the technology involved a bit more, it's still obviously unethical at a minimum, probably a violation of Googles TOS, and possibly even a violation of more serious laws of broader scope.
Intuitively, it seems like the Bing toolbar must either single Google out for this treatment, or else send a vast amount of data back to Bing. The experiment described in the article is not sufficient to rule out the possibility that every time you enter text into a form and then click on a link it's not being sent to Bing. I don't think it would be particularly hard to create an experiment that would reveal whether or not the behavior is generic or specific to Google. If it's generic behavior, that would imply that Bing is tracking all kinds of typing + clicking behavior to feed its index, which sounds like an obvious privacy problem to me. Unless there's very sophisticated intelligence behind selecting whether or not to send the data, that could constitute a major breach of data, a potentially very big legal problem and not the kind of PR Microsoft would like to have in the corporate world. Site-wide bans of Bing or the Bing toolbar are not likely to do wonders for their brand.
If, on the other hand, the next experiment reveals that the code is wired up to Google as the article seems to assume, Bing is basing a substantive part of their algorithm on the fruits of Google's algorithm. Google's TOS, based on my non-lawyerly scanning, also is quite clear about use of the services being personal, non-transferrable and that any content they provide may not be transferred to another party with modifications. It would be easy for Google to sue Bing on the basis that by snooping on users clicks and reporting it back to Bing, they are utilizing a portion of the content created by Google for the user without permission. Google has really great lawyers. It would surprise me if a week passes before Microsoft is disabling the feature or Google has served them papers. It would also surprise me if the only basis for such a suit were Google's TOS and not obscure parts of our legal code as well.
I believe there are key differences between what's going on here and your analogy that invalidate the comparison. For one thing, it seems very unlikely that the Bing search bar is constraining its behavior to Google employees. Doing the kind of reporting that seems to be occurring also seems unlikely to be the kind of thing someone would consciously submit to. It may be a stretch to assume that this is only happening for search results on Google, but it's a similar stretch to assume that the Bing search bar is only reporting sufficiently anonymized statistical data and not much more personal information. The final distinction is that in search, in many ways the marketing data is the product. Stealing data about Google's search results is tantamount to stealing Google's search, whereas stealing marketing data about the McRat Burger doesn't necessarily give Burger King a recipe.
I'm willing to back off and reserve judgement over the coming weeks and months. If nothing happens, I'll certainly concede. On the other hand, if Google fights and wins a legal battle over this, or if Microsoft quietly changes their behavior, I hope you'll be willing to reconsider your position as well.
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 08:22 · Score: 0

Also, is this part of the reason Google works so hard at Google Chrome?
So that people cannot be directed to Bing, or that Microsoft cannot gather data well enough?
Re:Not that suprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-03 07:54 · Score: 0

Yes :(
But maybe I'll have helped enlighten some other reader who wasn't sure :)

Oblig Car Analogy by Nidi62 · 2011-02-01 05:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

Is it cheating if Toyota watches what type of car styles Ford drivers prefer and then makes more cars of that style?

If this information is publicly available, then its not cheating. Its tailoring your service to better serve the customers of a competitor. Isn't that usually how you draw customers to you from a competitor?

--
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil

Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:41 · Score: 1

More like Toyota watches what type of car styles Ford drivers prefer, buys Ford cars, rebrands them and offers them to customers.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by SnarfQuest · 2011-02-01 05:42 · Score: 1

Is it cheating if Bill Gates buys a Ford Pinto, slaps a "Microsoft Binto" label on it, and sells it as his own?

--
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Socguy · 2011-02-01 05:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

No, but it is cheating if you lash your Toyota to the Ford then claim better fuel economy.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Ecuador · 2011-02-01 05:46 · Score: 1

No, it is exactly what GP said. Bing seems to be "pushing up" results of searches that people click on. Yeah, the can be results of google, yahoo, bing or whatever, does it matter? Obviously they can run the algorithm more effectively on their own results, as they always have the data on what people clicked after a search, but why shouldn't they include such data from competitor queries when they can?

--
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by wideBlueSkies · 2011-02-01 05:46 · Score: 1

Parent is right. It's not even reengineering or code copying/borrowing/stealing. MSFT is rebranding Google's results. Probably dropping google results into a MSFT database - wholesale - and spitting them back out to the user.

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Huh?
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:49 · Score: 0

Is it cheating if Bill Gates buys a Ford Pinto, slaps a "Microsoft Binto" label on it, and sells it as his own?
... Yes.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by CannonballHead · 2011-02-01 05:50 · Score: 1

It didn't say it simply bought the product and rebranded it. They used the information to improve their own. That would be more like buying a Ford, looking at it, and incorporating good ideas into your own.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by an1 · 2011-02-01 05:50 · Score: 1

But disassembling toyota parts and making your own car is cheating! Thats what is happening!!! Mimicking the competition!
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Runaway1956 · 2011-02-01 05:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

You really didn't RTFA, did you? Google set up FALSE, or FAKE results, and Bing copied them right onto their own search pages. Bing wasn't just watching Google - they outright stole Google's faked data. In the car analogy, Toyota would have watched to see what Ford was building, but Ford would have caught on, and set up a parking lot full of plywood cars without motors. Toyota then stole the fake cars, rebranded them as Toyota, and sold them on the market. Geeez. Microsoft fanbois will go to extremes to justify anything and everything that Microsoft does.

--
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:54 · Score: 0

So, for those who didn't RTFA, what Bing is doing is automatically importing Google search results into their own engine. If Toyota watches what Ford does successfully, does that too, and Ford go away, Toyotas improvements stick around. That's learning. With what Bing is doing, if Google goes away so does their technique - which is why it's cheating.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by bughunter · 2011-02-01 05:56 · Score: 1

Your analogy would hold water if Bing was copying the style of the results page (layout, colors, etc).
In this case, a better analogy would be if Ford bought key Toyota parts, put them in Ford vehicles, and then bragged about the superiority of Ford cars and trucks.

--
I can see the fnords!
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:01 · Score: 0

Your analogy might work if it covered Microsoft employees banged away at Google's web site doing searches and checking out what it came back with. I'm sure they do this, and Google probably does likewise with Bing, etc. This is what we expect. Competitors check out each others' products, take them for a spin.
TFA reveals that Microsoft is using Internet Explorer to retrieve the queries to Google from a large population of users, including many searches that a research team would probably not have thought of because of typos or just plain weirdness. This is more like if the editor of the New York Post had a spy in the printing press at the Daily News and found out what stories their competitor had cooked up for the following day. That's not supposed to be public information.
This is the way Microsoft "innovates". It is absolutely their standard operating procedure going back 30 years.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:13 · Score: 0

Don't they already do this with Mazda parts?
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:15 · Score: 0

Like the throttle system? or floor mats? I mean since these particular results in google's search database are defective.
Actually car makers do this all the time, they'll pick a pre-existing spark plug or oil filter on the market and use it. Basically any third party component is fair game, regardless of who the oem was.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by SockPuppetOfTheWeek · 2011-02-01 06:18 · Score: 0

Ok... time for a bad analogy to rule all other bad analogies, and in the darkness bind them...
Toyota gives all of its prospective customers handy little ink pens that help them write checks and stuff like that. Ford notices that some of its customers are wearing these Toyota souvenir pens in their pockets when they walk into Ford's showroom to ask about the specs and prices on some Ford vehicles. Ford thinks nothing much of it at first. However, Ford starts noticing that when they go over to the Toyota dealership to inquire about similar vehicles, they get suspiciously similar specs and prices quoted to them. Very suspiciously similar. Ford suspects that the pens might really be bugged so that Toyota can rig their specs and prices to compete with Ford, but of course they have no proof of this... yet.
To see if Toyota is really stealing their information, Ford sends a few of its employees under-cover. First they visit the Toyota dealership and pick up some of the souvenir pens. Then they come into Ford dealership showrooms and ask to have some EPA specs and prices on flying carpets and broomsticks. Playing along with this, the Ford dealers quote some fake specs and prices. Eventually they go over to the Toyota dealership, asking about flying carpets and broomsticks. Rather than the Toyota dealers responding "lol what?", suddenly, Toyota is giving them the same fake specs and prices for the nonexistent items...
Suspicious much?
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by BerneAI · 2011-02-01 06:24 · Score: 0

commodity pricing, I'm not even an apple fan boy and I can point to the argument that negates the commodity competition concept. sometimes yes but not always...
besides, Ford and Toyota have had technology trade agreements in place for a long time. (Ford hybrids eg.) not something that is likely anytime soon between MSFT and Goog. not to mention the fact that Toyota's research dept is big enough and good enough not to need input from Ford. (and Ford's is quite good). The first thing to go in companies that are spiraling down is R&D, which shows up as lack of innovation. No vision, No R&D, No innovation, borrowing technology and lots of lawsuits...earmarks of the golden age of Steve Balmer.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by tzhuge · 2011-02-01 06:33 · Score: 1, Interesting

"When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing."
As I have pointed out elsewhere in the thread. Google gamed the Bing toolbar by having their monitored users actually click on the these fake results! This could easily be attributed to Bing Toolbar monitoring user behavior, instead of Bing using ranking information from Google.
I have noticed that whoever brings up 'fanboi' is usually the real 'fanboi'. Perhaps that should be a new internet meme.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:34 · Score: 0

There used to be plenty of companies that bought a car, modified it and sold it under their own name.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:41 · Score: 0

Mmm, I'd say it's the other way around. If Ford sees Toyota is producing more "reliable" results, then they would use Toyota parts until they fix their own parts.

Now the problem here, is that contrary to Ford or Toyota, Bing and Google obtain revenue out of advertisement. So if Toyota at some point says: "Hey Ford uses Toyota parts", then Toyota should get part of the market because people should reason on why should they pay the middle man.

But Google is of course providing these results to Bing for free (so it's not like Ford is just using Toyota parts, but also they are getting them for free), so I would be pissed that someone is riding the wave for free getting the money that corresponds me without even giving me some credit while at it.

So if you want a better analogy: It's like when you are asked to work for your boss, pull allnighters and then your boss takes all the credit and gets a bigerg paycheck, while you're still sitting getting nothing for it, while you worked hard for it.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by IICV · 2011-02-01 06:45 · Score: 1

Bing wasn't just watching Google - they outright stole Google's faked data. In the car analogy, Toyota would have watched to see what Ford was building, but Ford would have caught on, and set up a parking lot full of plywood cars without motors.
No no no! I don't know why people keep on saying "Bing copied the results"! It was not Bing, it was Microsoft. The only way it would be just "Bing" that did this would be if the information was gathered from people who both have the Bing toolbar, yet still search from the Google home page - and even then, I'm not sure it would work; I mean, do Internet Explorer toolbars really have enough power to see what you're typing and what you end up clicking on an arbitrary page? If so that's kind of scary.
While I'm sure it's possible that that's the only source of data they have, I doubt they'd be able to get very much high-quality information from that (after all, the people who would do that are probably not the most clueful people in the world). It's way, way more likely that they're coordinating with whatever team handles the information Internet Explorer gathers about users.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by anyGould · 2011-02-01 06:46 · Score: 1

I think they're going a bit further than that. My reading is that they're taking the Google results, then tracking which ones the user clicks on, and using *that* into your test results. (Which is pretty close to "peeking at your neighbor's test and noting which answer they check off").
Comparing yourself to your competition is fine (Google even points out they use comparisons of top 10 results in their tracking). But this sounds fairly close to trying to build a "best of Google" search - no logic on it's own, just the tracking of what other people are doing.
Case in point: Google *could* be doing this right now, by wrapping one of those annoying shortURLs around all it's results (so it can capture what you actually clicked on). But people would scream bloody murder, and that's Google tracking it's own searches. MS is using their browser to spy on other engines.
In all, not illegal, but douche for sure.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by bmcage · 2011-02-01 06:46 · Score: 1

Also, if Ford uses a new plastic to build a better dashboard, Toyota needs a license to use the same thing.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:47 · Score: 0

...they say that google has given us 'search overload' and that google gives bogus results, all the while they are just being a mirror to google...lmao
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by tboulay · 2011-02-01 06:48 · Score: 1

Actually, I think it is kind of 'cheating' in a sense. Without Bing, your google results would be perfectly fine. Without google your bing results (depending on the search) would suck. Toyota may look at a car and copy the parts, but they don't get the actual parts from ford, they still make their product from the ground up. After toyota has copied the car, if ford goes under, toyota doesn't.
Look at it this way, Bing copies results from google, they compete and Bing wins the search engine war. The day google folds, Bing instantly becomes a worse product than it was the day before. Remember, they're not trying to mimic googles algorithm, they're using it and claiming it's their own. Designing a search engine like google and actually being dependent on google are two different things.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Runaway1956 · 2011-02-01 06:49 · Score: 1

LOL - just for info, I'm not a Google fanboi, so much as I'm a Microsoft hater. I mean, I like Google - but I still block Google Analytics and crap. I stopped using some of their products, because I thought they were to prying. Why on earth do I want Google to index my hard drives, anyway? If I were to do such a thing, then I might as well allow Bing to do the same, and Yahoo - hell, just post the entire contents of my drives to one of those Yahoo sites where the script kiddies hang out, and talk about "hacking" their girlfriend's email . . . . Ho-hum. Don't get me started. I could rant for a long time on human stupidity.

--
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:50 · Score: 0

Yeah Microsoft! Best OS, best IDE, best programming languages, and now the best search engine. Is there anything Microsoft can't do better!
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by anyGould · 2011-02-01 06:51 · Score: 1

This is more like if the editor of the New York Post had a spy in the printing press at the Daily News and found out what stories their competitor had cooked up for the following day.
It's one better - in this example, the NYP not only knows what stories the Daily News has in line, they also get to see which ones the readership likes as well.
That's the devilish part of this trick - if MS was just pinging Google's servers for results, there would be the opportunity for Google to block or otherwise prevent this. But by bringing the toolbars and browsers into play, MS sets themselves up as man in the middle and largely immune from anything Google can do technically. (Notice that Google had to poison their own well even to prove it was happening: they can't mess with MS's data without also messing with what their own customers get.)
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:53 · Score: 0

Only a small number of the test searches produced this result, about 7 to 9 (depending on when exactly Google checked) out of the 100. Google says it doesnâ(TM)t know why they didnâ(TM)t all work, but even having a few appear was enough to convince the company that Bing was copying its results.
7-9 in 100 isn't a simple case of regurgitating Google results. Looks like they're using "what does Google return" as one of their variables when considering searches, which is much less shabby than how they're getting the data.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:58 · Score: 0

This is more like observing people driving off a Ford lot, following them to their home (the creepy part), and then "borrowing" their car to make a perfect copy of it, returning the original, slapping "Toyota" on the copy, and offering it for sale the next day as "The newest Toyota car", hoping to get the same customer.
It's not that Bing is generally using ideas from Google's search that I find odd, it's that they are actually monitoring Google's customer choices and then employing the results as their own. That's downright weird. Furthermore, MS is using the advantage of an entrenched "default" web browser to do it, which borders on anticompetitive. The analogy would be if Google Chrome monitored user's searches of Bing and sent the results to Google to tune their system -- not that there would be many users silly enough to be searching Bing with the Chrome browser :-) Google can't really reciprocate (and they probably have more pride than MS apparently does).
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:01 · Score: 1

How much of TFA did you read?

Google sets up a honeypot page and installed the Bing Toolbar. By default, Bing Toolbar explicitly states it will track your clicks to help its own search algorithm (which can be disabled). Google folks go home, go to the honeypot page, make up terms that normally return no results and click through. This information is sent over to Bing, which has never seen the terms as well, and updates is data since, based on your click, it's relevant to whatever you just apparently clicked on. Google then screams that Bing is ripping of its search results by Google itself deliberately making it happen.

The whole 'evidence' trail seems engineered for this specific result. The suspicion started because of an obscure misspelled word that returned the same Wikipedia entry as the top result (from TFA, none of the other results matched). I'm willing to bet your could "honeypot" Google using the exact same style of tactics and claim they're ripping off your personal web search engine as well.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by LoganDzwon · 2011-02-01 07:02 · Score: 1

like Acura, Infinity, Mercury, Lincoln, AMG, Lexus? They have contracts with the parent company to allow this.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Bengie · 2011-02-01 07:03 · Score: 1

It's more like someone takes free over-the-air TV(paid via commercials), and where the original broadcaster normally has commercials, the re-broadcaster put their own commercials. In this way, the original broadcaster does not get paid for the commercials, but the person who is re-broadcasting the content is getting paid for their commercials.
Google is losing out on paid advertisement, while MS is getting paid for the results of Google's work.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:03 · Score: 0

Ford owns Mazda.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by SpinyNorman · 2011-02-01 07:04 · Score: 2

Nah - if Ford had fake customers coming into their showrooms to make fake purchases to mislead competitors who are watching, it doesn't reduce the legitimacy of watching your competitors (products, sales) to improve your own business. It might make Toyota in this analogy look stupid if they started building ridiculous cars that (wrongly) appeared to be popular at Ford, and that's all that applies here too.
There's nothing wrong with Microsoft trying to glean which of Google's "products" are most popular, so they can boost their own product range/advertising, but it does make them look a tad daft if they've been copying fake products rather than real ones.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Ecuador · 2011-02-01 07:11 · Score: 2

The results were not "FALSE" or "FAKE" in the sense you mean, Bing does not read the google result page and copy items, and managed to copy some fake items. These were perfectly legitimate sites that had a zero rank given the proposed query. When google engineers started clicking on those sites as a result of the - seemingly to Bing given the data at the time - unrelated queries, they fed Bing with user data connecting the search terms with the sites in question. Thus, the sites started ranking well.
I would be really be surprised if Google is not doing the same thing - improving rankings based to what people click on. The only reason for Google not to use such data from users that prefer Bing, or Yahoo in cases where they have access to it, would be if they thought Bing and Yahoo is REALLY crap. I can't comment on that, since I use google myself - I haven't really tried anything else for years - but I wouldn't ever ignore my competitors.
And when you talk about "fanbois" when you yourself appear biased beyond comprehension of TFA, it doesn't come out well.

--
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:24 · Score: 0

No you're both wrong. And profoundly stupid for missing the obvious analogy:
It's as if Toyota realized it's cars weren't as appealing as Ford's on their own merit so they began religiously copying any car Ford put out - new 2011 ford focus? BAM within a few months a car with the exact (or ridiculously close) styling/engineering comes out. Effectively stealing Ford's R&D money - or at least greatly reducing the amount Toyota *has* to spend on it.
Really it's about the efficaciousness of IP - software patents etc and should provide interesting precedent if it goes to court.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by RobertM1968 · 2011-02-01 07:38 · Score: 1

Hi FANBOI!!!!

As I have pointed out elsewhere in the thread. Google gamed the Bing toolbar by having their monitored users actually click on the these fake results! This could easily be attributed to Bing Toolbar monitoring user behavior, instead of Bing using ranking information from Google.
I have noticed that whoever brings up 'fanboi' is usually the real 'fanboi'. Perhaps that should be a new internet meme.
You forgot one MAJOR point. The WHOLESALE copying of the result itself, right down to the exact duplicate web page snippets. User behavior does not account for that. So... guess that makes you either lacking in comprehension, or... a fanboi. I will let you pick. ;-)

--
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by RobertM1968 · 2011-02-01 07:42 · Score: 1

Don't they already do this with Mazda parts?
Let's take a look at your bad car-analogy-response-via-another-car-analogy.
Ford own's a decent stake in Mazda and they cross develop products and share in research on various projects.*
Microsoft owns... oh, wait, they don't own a big chunk of Google. Nevermind. ;-)
*Starting in 1979 with a 7-percent financial stake, Ford began a partnership with Mazda resulting in various joint projects. During the 1980s, Ford gained another 20-percent financial stake. These included large and small efforts in all areas of the automotive landscape. This was most notable in the realm of pickup trucks (like the Mazda B-Series, which spawned a Ford Courier variant in North America) and smaller cars. For instance, Mazda's Familia platform was used for Ford models like the Laser and Escort, while the Capella architecture found its way into Ford's Telstar sedan and Probe sports models. In 2002 Ford gained an extra 5-percent financial stake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda#Partnership_with_Ford_Motor_Company

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StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by makomk · 2011-02-01 07:45 · Score: 1

The results were not "FALSE" or "FAKE" in the sense you mean, Bing does not read the google result page and copy items, and managed to copy some fake items. These were perfectly legitimate sites that had a zero rank given the proposed query.
More than that. They were websites that bore no relationship to the query whatsoever, and could never normally be returned in response to that particular query because the query was total nonsense that didn't appear anywhere on the Web whatsoever.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:54 · Score: 0

More than that. They were websites that bore no relationship to the query whatsoever, and could never normally be returned in response to that particular query because the query was total nonsense that didn't appear anywhere on the Web whatsoever.
So when that query appeared "on the Web", Bing started showing the result linked to it. Your point?
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:26 · Score: 0

Did you just use the word "steal" in the context of electronic data?
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by dannys42 · 2011-02-01 09:08 · Score: 1, Insightful

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I really don't understand what the hoopla is about. Google search the web, indexes the results, and offers users a way of getting at that information.
If Bing searched Google for this information and used it in it's results, how is this any different?
Couldn't you just think of it as a Google Portal? Maybe there's no reason why I'd use it, but what's inherently wrong about it? And (I don't know if they do this, but...) if they managed to reorganize the data, present it in new ways, or even offered different ways of sorting the data, wouldn't that be fair use? I mean Google does that with the rest of the web.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:17 · Score: 0

Further with a simple /etc/hosts file manipulation (which can be done in /Windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts) the google engineers could test if bing was identifying queries from other search engines and if there was any specific weighing (eg google results are worth more than ask). They could go further by creating their own client which talks directly to the bing toolbar server and inject fake click streams to see what happens.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:29 · Score: 0

Just like on copyright-violation stories, I feel compelled to point out that this isn't stealing - it's copying.
(It may be unethical if they used their position in the browser market to do this - an advantage that Yahoo etc don't share.)
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 10:16 · Score: 0

More than that. They were websites that bore no relationship to the query whatsoever
The web pages had a very specific relationship to the query. Users made the query and then went directly to those web pages.

It would be irresponsible to ignore that relationship. In fact, it is a much better relationship than just about any other real or imaginary one you could possibly dream up.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by mgblst · 2011-02-01 10:28 · Score: 1

Enjoying your ferarri laptop? Just more dodgy Microsoft tactics, the reason so many of us have come to hate the company, and they have not been growing so well.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by bughunter · 2011-02-01 10:35 · Score: 1

That's more than just an analogy; that's a parable.

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I can see the fnords!
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by bughunter · 2011-02-01 10:38 · Score: 1

Yes, we're both such drooling idiots that we're lucky our keyboards still work.
Oh, wait - you're drawing an analogy to copying the entire Google search engine, which Bing is clearly NOT doing.
You might want to polish your reading comprehension skills AND your people skills there, friend.

--
I can see the fnords!
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 11:20 · Score: 0

reference dot com?
here let me try.
parable (n): an analogy which doesn't know when to quit
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 11:49 · Score: 0

It's not getting "pushed up", it's that results did not exist for that query before, and they are nonsense queries with unrelated results, so none of the "1000 other signals" that Bing claims to use would possibly apply. Re-weighting is one thing; copying {search query, search result} pairs verbatim, without vetting any information retrieval scores at all, is a very different thing.
Bing is acting like a search (click) aggregator.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Lehk228 · 2011-02-01 12:26 · Score: 1

last i knew IE toolbars ran as dlls with at least the same rights as the user running the browser, if not higher due to being included in part of the "shell"

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Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Kalriath · 2011-02-01 15:41 · Score: 1

Uh, Google DOES wrap all search results so they can track which you clicked on. To hide it though, they use Javascript to only swap out the Google tracking URL at the last instant after the user clicks it.

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For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Kalriath · 2011-02-01 15:45 · Score: 1

I mean, do Internet Explorer toolbars really have enough power to see what you're typing and what you end up clicking on an arbitrary page? If so that's kind of scary.
Yes, they do. Just like Firefox toolbars.

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For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 16:10 · Score: 0

If Bing searched Google for this information and used it in it's results, how is this any different?
Please RTFA. The "if" part of your sentence is in no way related to what the article describes. Moron.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 17:09 · Score: 0

More likely a "Microsoft Bimbo" label.
Re:Oblig Car Analogy by RobNich · 2011-02-01 17:17 · Score: 1

The day google folds, Bing instantly becomes a worse product than it was the day before.
Holy shit, I shouldn't have had to scroll down so far to find a comment of this nature. Right-the-fuck-spot-on. What I'm thinking after reading the article, finally stated. Everyone else is making stupid car analogies, or discussing whether Bing is doing something "illegal."
What they're doing is, at best, unethical. If it had its intended effect, which is to make Bing attractive enough to users that Google loses popularity and no longer has the resources to keep its search engine top-notch, WE suffer. All of us. Microsoft's actions in this case are immoral and unethical. Like any of us are surprised.

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Hello little man. I will destroy you!

Could be used for great PR by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:38 · Score: 0

Google: The search so powerful it shapes other search engines!

The decision engine by imthesponge · 2011-02-01 05:38 · Score: 4, Funny

It just made the decision to copy from Google.

/. News Network by Even+on+Slashdot+FOE · 2011-02-01 05:39 · Score: 1

Today's top story is that companies are plagiarizing things they find on the internet. Not only will they steal your recipe and sell it, they will reverse-engineer your search algorithms in an attempt to more effectively take over the market.

Next on the news, Egypt gets a reminder of what the Streisand effect is, and why you don't want to be the focus of it. Also cats.

Re:/. News Network by sjames · 2011-02-01 06:23 · Score: 1

They're not reverse engineering. Effectively Bing Googles it and puts their name on the result. It's fair enough if Google now wants to promote itself as the search engine Bing turns to when it gets stumped.
Re:/. News Network by GameboyRMH · 2011-02-01 08:39 · Score: 1

Reverse-engineer my ass, they straight copied Google's search results. RTFA.

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"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel

YOU PUT MY HAND UPON YOUR ALGORITHM by mark72005 · 2011-02-01 05:40 · Score: 2

I DIP YOU DIP WE DIP

(into someone else's IP)

Re:YOU PUT MY HAND UPON YOUR ALGORITHM by pdbogen · 2011-02-01 05:59 · Score: 1

I.. DRINK.. YOUR.. ALGORITHM!
Re:YOU PUT MY HAND UPON YOUR ALGORITHM by Frellco · 2011-02-01 06:58 · Score: 1

In Soviet Russia, Algorithm Drinks You!
Re:YOU PUT MY HAND UPON YOUR ALGORITHM by MrMarket · 2011-02-01 07:41 · Score: 1

+1 Funny
Re:YOU PUT MY HAND UPON YOUR ALGORITHM by jdoverholt · 2011-02-01 09:02 · Score: 1

Hot cocoa out my nose... thanks for that.

Yahoo by Reorix · 2011-02-01 05:40 · Score: 5, Funny

Yahoo -> Bing -> Google

Looks like Yahoo gets the 3-day-old-bagel of search results.

Re:Yahoo by MrEricSir · 2011-02-01 06:03 · Score: 1

That's why I still use Ask Jeeves.

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There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Re:Yahoo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:29 · Score: 1

Five years ago, I would have said you're crazy. However, after dealing with "Google Instant", I tend to agree with you now. I hate it when GI interferes with a screen reader, and sometimes the search results just disappear after I type unless I press enter again. I'm not for staying logged in all the time, because I do value my privacy just a little bit.
That whole Google Instant thing smells to me of trying to stay relevant when they already had the best product originally. We users chose Google because of its simplicity, speed and lack of clutter. You don't have to improve your product, we liked it the way it was!
Re:Yahoo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:09 · Score: 0

If yahoo engineers were to recreate the test and find that it worked for them too, then you can't say that microsoft is copying google, just that it's data mining it's users.
Re:Yahoo by SadButTrue · 2011-02-01 07:24 · Score: 1

You could just turn it off you know.

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grape - the GNU free, open source rape
Re:Yahoo by treeves · 2011-02-01 07:40 · Score: 1

What's wrong with Archie?

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...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Re:Yahoo by martas · 2011-02-01 08:06 · Score: 1

1) turn it off if it bothers you. 2) "->" is not the same as "=>". you misinterpreted GP. 3) would everyone please stop jumping on the "google sucks now" bandwagon? it's getting annoying.

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weinersmith
Re:Yahoo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 10:34 · Score: 0

Sloppy thirds?

i am shocked.. by cpankonien · 2011-02-01 05:41 · Score: 1

really...microsoft copying something, instead of actually coming up with something new? i am shocked! it's so unlike them!

Slashdot is cheating, copying Hackers News by Shivetya · 2011-02-01 05:42 · Score: 0

Readers has run a sting operation that it says proves Slashdot has been watching what people read for on Hackers News, the stories they select from Hackers News page, then uses that information to improve Slashdots's own story listings"

I mean, if it is not a dupe its probably from Hackers News or worse, Digg

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* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.

Re:Slashdot is cheating, copying Hackers News by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:43 · Score: 0

Actually, I'd say a good 70% of Slashdot stories are on Ars Technica, Engadget or Drudge Report first. The other 30% probably come from other sites I don't visit.

homework analogies aside by OrangeTide · 2011-02-01 05:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

It seems like this is publicly available information. Were there any stipulations, even if informal, on how that information could be used?

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“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire

Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:48 · Score: 0

Not really the point.
It's brilliant PR for Google and a nightmare for MS, even if there's nothing litigable in it.
Re:homework analogies aside by Jahava · 2011-02-01 05:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

It seems like this is publicly available information. Were there any stipulations, even if informal, on how that information could be used?
Nobody's saying this is illegal (... yet?). Rather, it significantly reduces Bing's legitimacy as an innovative search technology and as a competitor to Google. In literature, using someone else's work requires a citation. For all ethical purposes, Bing should be labelled "powered by Google".
Re:homework analogies aside by Omnifarious · 2011-02-01 05:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

Like much of what Microsoft does, it's not technically 'wrong', but it certainly is pretty darned sleazy and underhanded.
And like most people who defend Microsoft, you concentrate on what's 'wrong', not whether something is sleazy or underhanded. I don't like companies that do sleazy and underhanded things. If they do it to their competition, they'll do it to me if they think it'll make a buck.

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Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Re:homework analogies aside by iammani · 2011-02-01 05:54 · Score: 1, Insightful

It would be completely acceptable if the information were publicly available.But what Bing Toolbar (allegedly) does is, when you visit google, it saves your search keyword and the results and sends them to Bing servers. And when someone else searches for similar keywords on Bing, it display these results. This in my opinion is not acceptable.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:54 · Score: 0

Significantly reduces Bing's legitimacy? Quite the contrary. It shows that their search bar is doing exactly what it is intended to do, track its users and see what content they find the most useful. If they enter a search term in any search engine, including Bing, it surely is getting tracked and then automatically updated in Bing's system. This shows that they have a great (and functioning) mechanism for tracking relevance among their users.
Re:homework analogies aside by OrangeTide · 2011-02-01 05:54 · Score: 1

There are also many other types of situations where it a citation is not ethically required or even permitted.
Citation is not permitted in this case, because it would violate Google's trademark.

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“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Re:homework analogies aside by Jahava · 2011-02-01 05:58 · Score: 1

There are also many other types of situations where it a citation is not ethically required or even permitted. Citation is not permitted in this case, because it would violate Google's trademark.
Saying "we use Google" doesn't violate Google's trademark at all. Saying "we are Google", on the other hand, does. Big difference.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:00 · Score: 0

All the stipulations in the Google study show that Bing's not simply "Powered by Google". If they were simply copying directly, that would have been just as simple to check and Google would have released THAT as its story. Given their results and methodology, the Bing Bar's search analysis could just be associating visited pages with recently typed text or something like that, which would be totally Google-agnostic .
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:01 · Score: 0

This isn't literature, it's business. It's called benchmarking. When my company is entering a new market or operating in one of their existing markets, we do as much research as possible on our competitors to tailor our products and pricing to be more competitive than they are. Sometimes we do it by requesting estimates from our competitors, especially if they price through a blind portal like a website or catalog. They do the same to us. If I was in the Search Engine business, I would absolutely do what MS is doing. Google is the big daddy on Search Engines, so to beat them you have to be at least as good as them, then get better. So you set up an algorithm that runs tons of searches on Google (very cheap technical research, a programmer to write the algorithm and set up the database, some hardware to run the thing, then let it run automatically and have an analyst to parse the results), and start tailoring your own engine to at least meet those searches and then find a way to get even better ones. Google by it's nature is free to use and returns that information, so in no way would this ever be illegal. If you're entering the Search Engine business and you're not trying to at least benchmark to Google's hits, why even bother trying?
Re:homework analogies aside by Jahava · 2011-02-01 06:01 · Score: 2

Significantly reduces Bing's legitimacy? Quite the contrary. It shows that their search bar is doing exactly what it is intended to do, track its users and see what content they find the most useful. If they enter a search term in any search engine, including Bing, it surely is getting tracked and then automatically updated in Bing's system. This shows that they have a great (and functioning) mechanism for tracking relevance among their users.
Quote the whole phrase. If Bing uses Google, it's less legitimate as an innovative search provider. Obviously, using (and improving upon) someone else's technology doesn't reduce the usefulness of your own technology. It just makes you a fork.
Re:homework analogies aside by Blakey+Rat · 2011-02-01 06:06 · Score: 1

How so?
I don't see anything sleazy or underhanded about using publicly-available information to improve your product.
Besides, it's not as if Google hasn't completely ripped-off Bing's image search... mud slings both ways.

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Comment of the year
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:07 · Score: 0

It seems like this is publicly available information. Were there any stipulations, even if informal, on how that information could be used?
Please RTFA. The information is not public. Microsoft watches the clicks of IE8 and bing toolbar users. Clicks on google search results pages are used to generate bing results. Unless Microsoft is making the clicks of their users publicly available, only microsoft has this information.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:09 · Score: 0

+1
Bing has to convince the public that it is _better_ than google. Copying results makes them look like a follower.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:18 · Score: 0

And google should say powered by: and then a list of every site on the net
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:24 · Score: 0

If the use the Google logo without permission they violate the trademark. if they use the word "Google" in plain text to refer to the company than they are not violating the trademark.
Re:homework analogies aside by clodney · 2011-02-01 06:25 · Score: 2

That is not what the FA alleges. The suspected mechanism is far more subtle. The suspicion is that URLs you type are captured by IE as part of its "suggested sites" feature, as well as URLs you visit. So you have a URL containing a Google search query, and a short time later you click on a link. MS appears to be correlating those links, noting that after visiting ABC, some users go to DEF. And the article goes to some pains to point out that this appears to be a low order search factor, which is only visible when all the other obvious criteria are controlled for (by means of a nonsense query).
From an implementation standpoint, it is not at all clear that MS is even targeting Google specifically - it could just be looking at order of sites visited.
Still, I have to agree that it feels kind of sleazy, even if it is a clever bit of analysis.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

The honeypot experiment in TFA shows that Bing improves its search results by monitoring user behaviour. It doesn't tie this _exclusively_ to Google. For all we know, Bing monitors all sorts of user actions across all sorts of web sites, including Google, and it uses these user actions as a hint about relevancy.
If this is so, then Bing is an admirable example of crowd-sourcing to improve search, not an evil theft from Google.
Google itself already uses user behaviour to improve relevance of search engine listing -- it monitors which search result you click on. Maybe Bing is just doing the same sort of thing across a wider data set, namely the user's entire behaviour. It would be entirely in keeping with Microsoft's style -- the way it uses instrumentation and telemetry to gather huge amounts of data about how people use Windows.
Re:homework analogies aside by SpinyNorman · 2011-02-01 06:26 · Score: 1

Hardly - Google and Bing are both a central algorithm plus dozens (hundreds/thousands?) of special case hacks where the algorithm doesn't cut it.
The quality of Google's (or Bing's) search results isn't due to the brilliance of page rank or any such core algorithm, but rather in deciding which hack to apply when, and in suppressing all the SEO attempts to game their results. The fact that Microsoft have apparently implemented some Google-inspired hacks has zero reflection on their technology - if anything it shows that Microsoft is just as good as Google in deciding when these particular tweaked results are appropriate (else Google would not be complaining).
BTW I hate Microsoft as well as the next guy due to the inept quality and bloated size of their software, but in this case there's really no cause for complaint. Bing is good, and they'd be stupid not to try to copy any enhancements that Google have, and vice versa. Wanna make a bet that Google isn't watching Bing just as intently and making improvements to their search results based on that?
Re:homework analogies aside by vux984 · 2011-02-01 06:30 · Score: 1, Insightful

In literature, using someone else's work requires a citation. For all ethical purposes, Bing should be labelled "powered by Google".
And I guess google for all ethical purposes should be labeled "powered by Wikipedia" since a wp link is returned in the top 10 for an inordinate number of searches, right? :p
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:31 · Score: 0

Why don't you read about it first? MS were caught because Google poisoned the results with fake results, which MS blindly copied and passed off as their own.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:33 · Score: 0

Then I guess you don't like any manufacturers, distributors, or retailers, because I can assure you that they ALL watch what their competitors offer and which of those offerings people actually buy, so that they can improve their own offerings. This is the exact same thing.
Re:homework analogies aside by imric · 2011-02-01 06:44 · Score: 1

Benchmarking? As RESULTS?
No, Microsoft is claiming to be innovative, but instead is copying results. They aren't even reverse engineering. Can you say "fraudulent advertising"? Sure. I knew you could.

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Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:44 · Score: 0

Well, Bing really *is* powered by Google, whether or not it's explicitly stated. Do you really think M$ would have come up with a "new improved" search engine if Google hadn't been beating the crap out of the old one? But none of this is particularly new in terms of competitive tactics. Plenty of other mofos have shot themselves in the foot before. I'm waiting for the new "VIM" engine, BTW.
Re:homework analogies aside by anyGould · 2011-02-01 06:54 · Score: 3, Informative

Quote the whole phrase. If Bing uses Google, it's less legitimate as an innovative search provider. Obviously, using (and improving upon) someone else's technology doesn't reduce the usefulness of your own technology. It just makes you a fork.
Or worse, one of those meta-engines. Only difference is that Bing has it's own engine (that it doesn't trust enough to use solo).
Also, the SEO folks will avoid Bing now, since they can get the same result by targeting Google (if you make it on Google, Bing will pick you up as well for free!)
Re:homework analogies aside by terjeber · 2011-02-01 06:57 · Score: 1

It doesn't, it just shows that if you use the Bing search bar it will, unsurprisingly, prime Bing with the data gathered. The google geniuses utterly misunderstood what they were seeing. MS wasn't copying Google, the Google engineers were priming Bing (and they were too stupid to realize it.
Re:homework analogies aside by Omnifarious · 2011-02-01 06:58 · Score: 2

Well, it's not really publicly available. Bing had to spy on end users to get it.
Secondly, it's not using publicly available information to improve your product. It's using a competitors product in place of your own and slapping your own name on it. That's fine in the world of manufacturing, but it's not fine in the world of information. It's basically finding a sneaky underhanded way around using Google's search API which they require trademark attribution to use.

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Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Re:homework analogies aside by terjeber · 2011-02-01 06:59 · Score: 1

Actually it is neither sleazy nor underhanded, it is just another evidence of brain-drain at Google. Brain down the drain. If you use the Bing search bar it will, unsurprisingly, prime Bing with the data gathered. The Google geniuses utterly misunderstood what they were seeing. MS wasn't copying Google, the Google engineers were priming Bing (and they were too stupid to realize it).
Re:homework analogies aside by Omnifarious · 2011-02-01 07:00 · Score: 1

I like them just fine. And what Bing is doing isn't the same. They are not improving their own product based on what they can observe about their competitors, they are selling their competitors product with their own label on it.

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Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Re:homework analogies aside by carbonUnit42 · 2011-02-01 07:45 · Score: 1

But is not the whole point of a search engine is to return relevant results? I would suspect that if Bing was using their own algorithm, why would it not return zero results for any of the random terms that Google used in their honeypot experiment? It would seem that Bing is blurring the lines somewhat between an actual search engine, (er, decision engine?) and a good 'click tracker'. If MicroSoft wants to compete against Google, maybe they should focus their efforts on combining relevancy with tracking users clicks, and not just, as this article suggests, offer up results because some user 'clicked on it a few times'.
Re:homework analogies aside by RobertM1968 · 2011-02-01 07:45 · Score: 1

All the stipulations in the Google study show that Bing's not simply "Powered by Google". If they were simply copying directly, that would have been just as simple to check and Google would have released THAT as its story. Given their results and methodology, the Bing Bar's search analysis could just be associating visited pages with recently typed text or something like that, which would be totally Google-agnostic .
Ummm, go and RTFA. That IS a big part of the story... right to Bing copying the exact same web snippets from the Google results - or did you think that Bing only found the page the user was interested in (via BingBar or whatever) and stopped there? Or did you not notice that Bing also copied Google's search result, snippet and all?

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StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Re:homework analogies aside by makomk · 2011-02-01 07:51 · Score: 1

The Google geniuses utterly misunderstood what they were seeing. MS wasn't copying Google, the Google engineers were priming Bing (and they were too stupid to realize it).
Oh, they realized it all right. That's the entire point of their experiment - to demonstrate that, every time some user of the Bing search bar did a Google search, the search results were being sent back to Microsoft and potentially copied into the Bing search results page for that search term. They had evidence that Microsoft was copying Google's search results somehow even before the experiment, it was just designed to offer undeniable proof of how Microsoft were doing.
Re:homework analogies aside by RobertM1968 · 2011-02-01 07:52 · Score: 2

How so?
I don't see anything sleazy or underhanded about using publicly-available information to improve your product.
Besides, it's not as if Google hasn't completely ripped-off Bing's image search... mud slings both ways.
BRAND... to improve Microsoft's BRAND. Not their product. Their product is an innovative, better, search and decision engine (or so they claim) and based on their press releases and statements about it, that's based on their "superior" ranking, rating and decision making engine. That *product* isn't improved by it, even if the results are improved. Thus, the BRAND is improved by having more relevant results by "borrowing" those results from Google, while the *PRODUCT* is showing to be enough of a failure at it that they have to monitor Google's results and what users find relevant there.
Remember, Microsoft never announced a "we'll provide you the most relevant Google results based on Google users searches" product. Their product, the search engine and algorithm behind it is something else entirely and what they have been promoting.
THAT is the big difference. There have been (and still are) a bunch of sites that use other search engines' results and determine relevancy based off those results. BUT, the big difference is they claim that is exactly what they are doing, while Microsoft's statements have been more in line with how great their search engine, and the back end code, algorithms and "decision engine" is. Apparently, the thing it's really good at is deciding to use Google for it's searches. Ironic, huh?

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StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Re:homework analogies aside by iammani · 2011-02-01 08:02 · Score: 1

I dont think it can understand the search term, if it were not specifically targeting google.
Re:homework analogies aside by unapersson · 2011-02-01 08:32 · Score: 1

And if you're using Bing searches that's expected. But for searches on third party web sites? Collecting terms and links you click on. Isn't this moving towards spyware territory?
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:41 · Score: 0

"Nobody's saying this is illegal (... yet?)."
Yeah, I'm no lawyer, but the whole thing smacks of an "anticompetitive" activity. MS is using their entrenched product, installed by default in Windows (Internet Explorer) to do this. Even if Google tried to implement the same thing in their Chrome browser, it wouldn't be as effective a source of information because of the unfair advantage that MS has with Internet Explorer already installed on so many machines. MS is again using it's near-monopoly advantage in operating systems to try to improve their position for a different product (i.e. search engines).
Re:homework analogies aside by terjeber · 2011-02-01 08:44 · Score: 1

No, not really. Again, it is not storing your search as such, but ranking certain pages higher based on your search term. There is a difference between priming a search engine based on your searches and storing your personal information.
As it comes to spy-ware, does Google actually make anything else? Have you ever used, for example, GMail?
Re:homework analogies aside by Blakey+Rat · 2011-02-01 08:52 · Score: 1

Sorry I just can't get worked-up about this.
Bing informs their result using Google. Google informs their result using Yahoo's directory (among a billion other sources.)
The reason Bing's result for "4444dsdsadadas" (the various gibberish Google used to discover this) is the same as Google's is because *that term had never been searched before* and thus it was Bing's *only* input for that term.
I don't see anything wrong with what Microsoft's doing. If Google thinks it's wrong to use someone else's opinion to determine search results, they better turn off PageRank right now because *that's all it is*.

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Comment of the year
Re:homework analogies aside by index0 · 2011-02-01 09:53 · Score: 1

And how do you know the link is from wikipedia? It is because google tells you or labels it as such.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:56 · Score: 0

For all ethical purposes, Bing should be labelled "powered by Google".

A phrase like that is certainly trademark violation. big difference.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 10:01 · Score: 0

And like most people who defend Microsoft, you concentrate on what's 'wrong', not whether something is sleazy or underhanded. I don't like companies that do sleazy and underhanded things.
Any company that makes 60%+ profit year over year like Google does is doing something sleazy and underhanded. Not necessarily illegal, but unethical. Cutting off newspaper and other professional content producers' air supply for instance.
Re:homework analogies aside by cspankne · 2011-02-01 10:46 · Score: 1

I disagree entirely. This is exactly the point.
Bing and Google both index sites on the intertubes. Does it not make sense to index the other indices? Personally, assuming that Google isnt the only one that Bing is grabbing referral data from, I think it shows real innovation.
The biggest mess, is potentially how Google altered it's search to reflect unnatural results. They have repeatedly claimed that they were unable to do so. Proving that they can, and now promise to remove this "feature" and go back to normal, that makes everything ok?
Could be a messy PR situation for Google, assuming they havent already paid the masses to hush that prize piece up.
Re:homework analogies aside by vux984 · 2011-02-01 11:11 · Score: 1

And how do you know the link is from wikipedia? It is because google tells you or labels it as such.
I know the link goes to wikipedia.
I don't know why google decided to presented in the top 10.
Google doesn't tell us how they got that information. But we do know that google makes use of a LOT of information that other people put on the web in order to determine their search results... and they aren't being credited. Pagerank after all is in large part "hey lets see what other people on the web is important and return that first"
Re:homework analogies aside by RobNich · 2011-02-01 13:15 · Score: 1

it is not storing your search as such, but ranking certain pages higher based on your search term
They parsed the Google URL and used the search terms to rank the links that were clicked on the search results page. The search results that were clicked on the Google search results page were not previously in Bing at all for the corresponding keywords. They absolutely stored the search "as such." Did you seriously RTFA and then post this?

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Hello little man. I will destroy you!
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 13:35 · Score: 0

Phrases can also be trademarked, and in this specific case Google has already trademarked that phrase. They used to use it a bit for their GSA (Google Search Appliance) product.
"A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others." -- uspto.gov
You can certainly refer to a company named "Google". You can even show an image of their trademark in the context of discussing that trademark. You cannot use the name or trademark or servicemark in the context of stating explicitly or implicitly that the service you provide is provided by or authorized by Google.
Re:homework analogies aside by clodney · 2011-02-01 14:47 · Score: 1

A good point. I bow to your superior wisdom.
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 15:06 · Score: 0

Bing should be labelled "powered by Google".

That would be the only way to get people to use bing...
Re:homework analogies aside by Kalriath · 2011-02-01 15:52 · Score: 1

"Nobody's saying this is illegal (... yet?)."
Yeah, I'm no lawyer, but the whole thing smacks of an "anticompetitive" activity. MS is using their entrenched product, installed by default in Windows (Internet Explorer) to do this.
No it isn't.

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For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 17:27 · Score: 0

For all ethical purposes, Bing should be labelled "powered by Google".
I so much agree that I tweeted a twitpic ;-)
Re:homework analogies aside by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 03:43 · Score: 0

Yahoo's directory is not a web search engine - it's a directory. I'd EXPECT a search engine would include it when relevant. Also, if you read the article, you will note that it was the duplication of OTHER results that lead to Google doing this test. And on that note, it shows that Microsoft DOES NOT use their own page ranking algorithm to ascertain the relevance of results they COPY from Google.
On top of that, you miss something else in this... there apparently was no page scanning (of the "source" website) by Microsoft to get the site's information/snippet - they simply COPIED Google the results.
What it shows is that when they do not have the answer, they search Google, and then put full faith in the Google results and in Google's pageranking technology. It does not speak well of them. I cannot think of any other major search engine that uses other search engines to populate it's own database. (and please, don't bring up (a) Yahoo directory, or (b) Yahoo Search (umm... Powered by Bing), or (c) any other directory-is-not-a-search-engine).
Re:homework analogies aside by Blakey+Rat · 2011-02-02 03:59 · Score: 2

Jesus.
Look, the Bing toolbar does the following:
1) Watches what the user types into textboxes
2) Looks for resulting link clicks
If it's doing ONLY that, completely ignoring what domain the textbox and links were on, it'll manage to scrape Google results in exactly the way Google has demonstrated.
That doesn't mean that Microsoft is going out of their way to copy Google, that means Microsoft's toolbar tries to associate searched terms to clicked links. I think that's a *good* thing... if Bing has that data, they should sure as shit use it. It would be stupid not to.
People are talking as if the Bing toolbar has a piece of code that says: "if domain=='google.com' { ripOffSearchResults(); }". If you can PROVE that's the case, then by all means be outraged. But until you can, all it shows is that Bing has come up with a rather creative way to take results from the hundreds/thousands of site-specific search engines out there (not just Google) and inform their own results with them. As the Bing rep says, they get data like that from *thousands* of sites... they're not singling out Google.
BTW, you can prove they're not ripping-off Google's results easily. Just search for a keyword with more searchers. And... lo and behold... Bing's results are different.

--
Comment of the year
Re:homework analogies aside by RobertM1968 · 2011-02-06 13:46 · Score: 1

BTW, you can prove they're not ripping-off Google's results easily. Just search for a keyword with more searchers. And... lo and behold... Bing's results are different.
"BTW, you can prove (the times they are NOT ripping off Google's results) that they are not ripping off Google's results... but the rest of the time they are (which is why, even the web snippets are identical)."
FTFY.

--
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!

Microsoft = Chinese competition by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:43 · Score: 0

Tech firms have their own Chinese-style competitor right here in the USA! It all goes back to the personality of Bill Gates.

RTFA by Ecuador · 2011-02-01 05:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

From the article it seems that MS is tracking which google (and I assume any other search engine, including Bing) search results people are clicking, and then trying to promote these in their results.
It does sound like something very logical to do to improve search results, doesn't it?

--
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS

Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:47 · Score: 0

Completely logical. People are just sipping on the ol' Microsoft Hatorade.
Re:RTFA by Runaway1956 · 2011-02-01 05:58 · Score: 1

Incompetence is the last resort of the violent? Oh - your logic? If it were that simple, maybe. But, how do you explain the fake results that made it into Bing searches? I mean - simply watching Google might be alright, but stealing Google's data - be it real or fake - is not alright.

--
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Re:RTFA by Ecuador · 2011-02-01 06:21 · Score: 4, Informative

Let me make this plain to you:
Bing does not seem to care about which results Google returns. What it cares is the sites people choose to visit as a result of a search query. When people use bing for searching, bing can always get that piece of data and improve results, when people use their toolbar they can also get that information from queries running on other search engines.
The "fake results" were real sites that were just unrelated to the search. So bing was seing people after searching for something to be clicking on a website it thought irrelevant. In 7-9% of the cases that result got a good boost in Bing results, after all if people really do want to read that after doing that search, why not put it there?
It is interesting that this worked for only a small percentage of fake results, when all the queries where strings that would not be typed naturally, so had no "real" results, although it is expected that Bing would not "blindly" use clickthrough data, but only along with other factors.

--
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Re:RTFA by imric · 2011-02-01 06:54 · Score: 0

ROFL. So - they spy on their users' search results and then represent those results as their own, advertise 'bing' as an innovative and new search engine, and that's admirable to you, and anybody who mocks this behaviour (typically 'innovative' for MS) is "sipping on the ol' Microsoft Hatorade".
Bwahahaha!

--
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:07 · Score: 0

You still didn't RTFA did you? Google Engineers said what they did. They made the fake results, installed IE, enabled suggested sites, I think Bing bar too (Both of which you have to manually enable, they are disabled by default). When to fake results in IE, it appeared on Bing.
It just sounds like another algorithm MS is using leveraging real world data.
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:08 · Score: 1

I'm neither a Microsoft nor a Google fanboy - I have issues with both, but educate yourself rather than make assumptions. What is happening this - users are installing a Bing toolbar on their browser. Every time a link is clicked with relevant content it sends this information to Bing. This is just smart - you can't beat manually-reviewed search results by a human. It's crowd-sourcing, they're not just scraping Google. And honestly is a link, title and description of a web site Google's data or is it the website owner's data? No one on this thread seems to realize what's going on and are reacting to the summary.
Re:RTFA by theaceoffire · 2011-02-01 07:15 · Score: 1

Why yes, it does sound logical.

"How do we make a good paper?"

"Take other people's papers, say we wrote it, and then say our papers are better than theirs."

BRILLIANT!

--
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
Re:RTFA by ViViDboarder · 2011-02-01 07:26 · Score: 1

This sort of logic doesn't really apply to other industries though... I can't look at the Billboard top 100 and then take all the top songs that people are buying and just copy them.
Re:RTFA by Solandri · 2011-02-01 07:27 · Score: 1

It does sound like something very logical to do to improve search results, doesn't it?
It improves search results, but it doesn't improve your search results. All it's doing is making the search results more Google-like. If Google's search results are better than yours, then yes your search results will appear to become better. But that's because they're becoming more Google-like, not because they're becoming better. If Google had worse search results, then it would make your search results appear to become worse. Important distinction.

e.g. Say you're trying to weigh an object which weighs T kg (T for truth). You try to make your own scale and it comes up with a certain weight (call it B). But it isn't as accurate as the best scale on the market, which returns a slightly different value (call it G, and |T-G| is less than |T-B| ). As it happens the best scale on the market is free to use. So you just set up your scale to report a weight of B' = (0.5*G+0.5*B) instead of B. B' is only closer to T than B when G is more accurate than B. If the opposite is true, then B' is actually less accurate than B.

So across all possible vales of T, G, and B, your B' is going to be no more and no less accurate than B. So it's not an improved measuring engine. It's just relying on the fact that G is more accurate than B to come up with a more accurate measurement. If you extend the logic fully, B' would come closest to T when B' = (1*G +0*B). That is, when you completely discount your own measurement and just copy the G measurement. So no it's not a very logical thing to do to improve your search results. Essentially, (1) you're telling people to just use Google, and (2) you're sticking your own ads onto Google's results.

Also, apparently the new /. design breaks when it encounters less-than and greater-than signs.
Re:RTFA by LBArrettAnderson · 2011-02-01 08:44 · Score: 1

"spy" ? This tracking is something people can enable and disable themselves.
Re:RTFA by Rockoon · 2011-02-01 10:28 · Score: 1

That isnt a correct analogy. A correct analogy would be that you are looking to see what other people are buying and then produce your own top 100 list.

--
"His name was James Damore."
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 10:57 · Score: 0

If in so doing, MS is leveraging their monopoly power in one market (browsers / OS) to benefit their business in another market (search) - I'm pretty sure that is illegal...
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 11:24 · Score: 0

It surely is! Essentially these models that do the ranking are built on gathering evidence for or against the relevancy of a particular link. The possible feature set you can examine as evidence is very large. Restricting yourself to just the contents of a few keywords on a web page seems silly since there is so much information in what the users actually click on.
Brilliant move by Google's PR team though - although if you understand the technology and the models used by Bing or Google you realize that it was a sleazy move by Google...
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 14:33 · Score: 0

Yes, it is logical, but it's still underhanded.
They are being cheap, and not spidering on their own. They are taking advantage of google's superior index.
They are not determining keywords on their own. They are taking advantage of google's keyword association.
Bing, on it's own, is a piece of shit. The only reason it is providing results comparable to google is because it is using the results provided by google.
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 15:30 · Score: 0

Very logical, and sleazy. How many other search companies can leverage a large percentage of browsers to report these results? This is entirely thanks to Internet Explorer reporting what end users are clicking through to back to Microsoft. Maybe Chrome will get traction in installed base someday, but even so, it still leaves Yahoo out of the loop for this type of data.
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 17:41 · Score: 0

Sure, it's a way for MS to pick up additional information but because Bing doesn't know why the search term relates to the page, it becomes obvious that they were just copying.
The thing I find interesting is knowing that IE is picking up this information, can people then turn around and game the system. If we assume the system works for any page you go to with a search field, why couldn't you make a fake search engine. Make it look and act like google and input your competitors product, but the results returned are yours. Click on your link. Rinse and repeat. Give it to a load generator, run up a few thousand fake users and leave it repeating this process for a few days.
Assuming they're watching all the time, is this going to tell Bing that what users really want when they search for your competitors product, is your product?
Re:RTFA by unity100 · 2011-02-02 05:16 · Score: 1

they ARE scraping google. they are deciding to show not what altavista shows as first result, but, what google shows. it is copying.

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Read radical news here
Re:RTFA by unity100 · 2011-02-02 05:20 · Score: 1

let me make this plain to you :

it doesnt matter a flying fuck what bing cares about which results it returns.

copying other SEARCH engine's results and showing them as YOUR own results, is, COPYING.

no, its not 'improving product'. you cant redefine copying, stealing.

if you argue that you can, i am going to redefine copyright violation as 'spreading information', and claim that it is totally legal.

--
Read radical news here
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 07:16 · Score: 0

It is also tracking the results you get back from the search engine of choice. That is not so logical.
Re:RTFA by imric · 2011-02-02 07:28 · Score: 1

Yes, spy. If you leave your front door unlocked, that doesn't mean its legal for everyone to come in and take pictures of you sleeping in the nude...

--
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-03 01:38 · Score: 0

I don't think Bing is just looking at what a user clicks on when they browse search results, I would imagine that they are looking at the whole of a users browsing data. That Google's engineers were able to manipulate Bing's search result for manufactured search terms is most likely an artifact of the way the set up the experiment. Maybe Bing's coders really did use a model as simplistic as the one you paint (it wouldn't surprise me given some of the things that came out of Microsoft), but I doubt it.
Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-03 11:20 · Score: 0

Sure, it sounds logical, if the information was theirs to do the analysis on to begin with. The fact is, though, why would anyone believe even for an instant that Microsoft has any right to what goes on when people visit *any* website that isn't theirs, what alone a search competitor's??! As a user of Google, I see the acts as spying. I in no way consent to Microsoft using my actions (clicks) for *any* purpose at all, especially to make any of their products *appear* to be better.
What if I was able to run a debugger on Microsoft Word, analyze every single thing that happens internally in the program when I do anything, then build my word processor to run/work/crash exactly like it? I'm betting Microsoft would in no way see that as fair use; and, better yet, if Google was farming data from Bing, the end result (other than Google starting to give crap results) would be Microsoft crying very loudly via their 40 billion lawyers and fat wallet.
Dear Google, plug the hole using whatever Microsoft-prrof means you can devise or I for one will not use your search engine at all. I do not support Microsoft in any way, shape, or form and that includes letting them use my clicks to falsely make their products look like they don't suck!
Re:RTFA by mmj638 · 2011-02-03 16:58 · Score: 1

it seems that MS is tracking which google (and I assume any other search engine, including Bing) search results people are clicking, and then trying to promote these in their results.
Not quite - the problem is that MS are also adding them as new results where but don't already exist in Bing. Which is how Google's fake data got copied into Bing's database.

No news here by aBaldrich · 2011-02-01 05:44 · Score: 1

How's this any different from the typical Microsoft behavior?

--
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.

Re:No news here by GameboyRMH · 2011-02-01 08:41 · Score: 1

It's more pathetic and brazen than usual.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel

Close the loop? by TerranFury · 2011-02-01 05:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

Now what happens if Google, to improve its search results, starts copying Bing as well? Is this feedback interconnection stable, or will it merely result in spurious noise being amplified, which commentators will misidentify as vast social movements?

Re:Close the loop? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:55 · Score: 0

If they copy Bing, then Google's quality drops to Bing's level. I have a feeling that google engineers are that stupid. So, not to worry.
Re:Close the loop? by nedlohs · 2011-02-01 05:56 · Score: 5, Funny

It will become self aware, and set in motions events that end up with humans being used as batteries in vast farms.
Re:Close the loop? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:00 · Score: 0

This has already occurred. It is part of the new coversheet for your TPS reports. You are using the new coversheets aren't you?
Re:Close the loop? by boristdog · 2011-02-01 06:05 · Score: 1

Then the internet really WILL become nothing but cat pictures and porn!
Re:Close the loop? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:06 · Score: 0

This scenario confuses me. Does that make Google evil then, or does that just make Microsoft that much MORE evil?
Re:Close the loop? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:16 · Score: 0

So nothing surprising, then? As long as the world they put us in was even slightly fun I'm pretty sure most of the rest of my American fellows would willingly join in. I'd be asking to be hooked up if it was even slightly better than RL is. I wouldn't stab my friends in the back to get back in, especially if the world inside was kind of crappy, but if it was even half as nice as it could easily be... I don't buy the Matrix's explanation that people reject Utopia. People are lazy by nature, and while some would reject it (Emo types) I'm willing to bet most wouldn't.
Re:Close the loop? by md65536 · 2011-02-01 06:47 · Score: 1

Now what happens if Google, to improve its search results, starts copying Bing as well? Is this feedback interconnection stable, or will it merely result in spurious noise being amplified, which commentators will misidentify as vast social movements?
This would require Google to feed on a parasite. It would be analogous to having a tapeworm fall out of your butt, and then eating it.
Or another example is: If you had a human centipede, Google is at the front and Microsoft is at the back. "Closing the loop"... well... again this would involve Google eating its own shit after Microsoft has re-digested it.
So why would Google ever stoop to eating Microsoft's shit?
Re:Close the loop? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:30 · Score: 0

It would improve results of both engines because Google will then have insights in what Bing users are clicking. Positive feedback would increase the score gap between the results within single search but it wouldn't affect the order of search results within single search.
I don't see anything bad about this practice. All I care about is better search results.
Re:Close the loop? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:48 · Score: 0

Bing does not copy Google's result. It uses the information that a human being, after entering a search term into a search engine and being presented with a couple of web page summaries, chooses to click on a particular link. This is a vote of confidence, much like linking to that web page, and should therefore increase the sort rank of that web page. ("User thinks the link is relevant to the search term.") The source of this information is the user, not the other search engine. Every major search engines tracks clicks on results pages for this very reason. If the purpose were to copy results, they wouldn't have to do that, would they?
Re:Close the loop? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:53 · Score: 0

It will go into an infinite recursion, and the the self aware system will fail
Re:Close the loop? by mgblst · 2011-02-01 11:02 · Score: 1

This is starting to make sense now.
Clearly Google had set up a honeypot page with the search query 'Good batteries' pointing to the wikipedia entry on humans.
Re:Close the loop? by Random+BedHead+Ed · 2011-02-01 16:16 · Score: 1

It will become self aware, and set in motions events that end up with humans being used as batteries in vast farms.
Whoa.
Re:Close the loop? by timboc007 · 2011-02-01 16:19 · Score: 1

Don't cross the streams!
Re:Close the loop? by RobNich · 2011-02-01 17:29 · Score: 1

Amazing how many ACs are pro-Microsoft shills today. Bing DID copy the search result. In the article, they describe how they injected fake keyword search results into Bing by placing them in Google and then clicking the results of a Google search. Bing didn't change the rank of search results based on the click tracking, it ADDED THE SEARCH RESULTS to Bing.

--
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
Re:Close the loop? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 23:02 · Score: 0

So when a Windows phone user visits a club that he found through Bing Maps, and Google Latitude reports the user's location to Google which then ranks the club higher because of that, is that cheating too?
And no, Bing did not add the search results. The results are ordinary web pages which were already present in the Bing database. Only the link between the search words and the result was created, and it wasn't created because Google showed the result, but because a user clicked on the result. Where do you draw the line? A user finds an interesting site through Google and visits it - cheating if Bing uses that information? A user finds an interesting site through Google and links to it - not cheating if Bing uses that information?
At least there's one thing we can always rely on: Microsoft baaaad, Gooooogle gooood.

Never Understood by Phoenixlol · 2011-02-01 05:45 · Score: 4, Informative

why people ever said Bing returned more relevant results. Maybe it's just because I've been using Google forever that I now know what to type in to get the results I want, but running the same searches over at Bing has_never_gotten me as relevant results.

Re:Never Understood by tendrousbeastie · 2011-02-01 06:29 · Score: 1

I agree with this. I know that I have been trained to search by Google, and I can generally anticipate what keywords will get what I want, which will get a load on nonsense, which will get pop-culture cruft, etc.
It could be in part that Bing is trying to game the input/output of Google's result to imitate this intuitive familiarity, rather than just the results themselves.
Re:Never Understood by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:41 · Score: 1

I haven't tried Bing yet, but I do have to say that after so many years of using Google effectively, the number of disreputable results* on the first page is getting out of hand. I seriously question whether they're putting enough emphasis on the importance of quality in their search results, as a continuation of this trend could see them getting out of the search business before the decade is over.

*Whether sites that use sentence fragments of various and sundry topics (is there a term for this?), or link farms, or pseudo-search sites.
Re:Never Understood by JonahsDad · 2011-02-01 06:53 · Score: 0

running the same searches over at Bing has_never_gotten me as relevant results.
Obviously you're not running these Google searches in Internet Explorer with the Bing toolbar installed.
Re:Never Understood by nowen2dot · 2011-02-01 07:58 · Score: 1

Yeah. I tried Bing once when it was new. The results weren't even in the neighborhood of what I was searching, so I went back to Google. On the other hand, I just tried the search results in the article and Bing was the *only* one to give me those results. Google linked to some lame articles about a software sting operation. ;-)

--
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx
Re:Never Understood by Locutus · 2011-02-01 08:07 · Score: 2

maybe the marketing releases are where you heard that BING gives more relevant results.

I looked at BING when it first came out and when I noticed that out a few pages they were showing some of the same links as what was shown on earlier pages, it was obvious it was just another Microsoft product out to use marketing tricks instead of winning my being better. Sounds like MS BING still sucks. No surprise here. IMO

LoB

--
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Re:Never Understood by ThePromenader · 2011-02-01 11:42 · Score: 1

With your way of writing 'bing', I actually heard the sound of a loud counter bell in my head several times while reading your post.

--

No, no sig. Really.

ThePromenader
Re:Never Understood by aiht · 2011-02-01 15:36 · Score: 1

With your way of writing 'bing', I actually heard the sound of a loud counter bell in my head several times while reading your post.
I heard the sound of a machine that goes "bing".

Lawsuits! by h00manist · 2011-02-01 05:46 · Score: 1

The lawyers would just love this.

--
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/

Not much of a story here. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:46 · Score: 0

I mean, seriously?

and this is new for M$? by Joe+The+Dragon · 2011-02-01 05:47 · Score: 0

and this is new for M$?

they did the same thing with dos and windows.

Re:and this is new for M$? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:35 · Score: 0

mod parent +1 informative. Info started to emerge that, indeed, MS copied dos and windows 3.1 from Google (citation pending).
Re:and this is new for M$? by terjeber · 2011-02-01 07:00 · Score: 1

Probably not, since they didn't do anything at all. Google engineers, using the Bing toolbar, were priming Bing. The Google engineers were just too dumb to realize it.
Re:and this is new for M$? by sirrunsalot · 2011-02-01 08:21 · Score: 1

You said that twice already, and I think it's pretty clear that priming Bing is exactly what they set out to do.

Look at this, what by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:47 · Score: 2, Informative

Stefan Weitz, director of Microsoft’s Bing search engine:

Opt-in programs like the [Bing] toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites. This “Google experiment” seems like a hack to confuse and manipulate some of these signals.

So this "opt-in" program can track all of your clicks and record it for whatever. This is nothing like the Google privacy violation at all, they "opted-in" to this search toolbar so all privacy violations about seeing everything you click on are now your problem.

Re:Look at this, what by The+Moof · 2011-02-01 07:17 · Score: 1

Honestly, it sounded like they opted-in, did some very intentional keyword poisoning, then were "outraged" by the results.
Re:Look at this, what by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:11 · Score: 0

And you think the Google toolbar doesn't do the exact same thing?
Re:Look at this, what by ajs · 2011-02-02 21:25 · Score: 1

This is nothing like the Google privacy violation at all, they "opted-in" to this search toolbar so all privacy violations about seeing everything you click on are now your problem.
1) What Google privacy violation are you talking about?!
2) Understand that no one is saying that Microsoft broke the law.
3) Also understand that any claim Microsoft had to being the better search engine just exploded in a hail LOLs.
4) I don't think grandma knew Microsoft was saving every search she ever did. It might not be illegal, but that doesn't mean it's moral, ethical or legitimate.

It's a tacit admission of inferiority by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:52 · Score: 1

Whether it's "cheating" or not is simply a matter of how one defines the word. But undeniably, it is a tacit admission that Bing is not as good at ranking results as Google, and needs Google's help to rank results effectively.

What are google's ToS? by TexasTroy · 2011-02-01 05:52 · Score: 1

If the google expressly prohibits the use of its services for commercial purposes without some sort of license, or their results are copyrighted, or some other such legal mechanism is in place, Microsoft could/should find themselves on the other end of yet another lawsuit.

Re:What are google's ToS? by cdrnet · 2011-02-01 08:01 · Score: 1

Good thing that Google check's every single site's ToS before indexing them and tracking their users in any way (including Google Toolbar, Analytics) ...

For all those who say this isn't cheating... by geekmux · 2011-02-01 05:52 · Score: 0

...this is cheating, plain and simple, for one reason.

Microsoft spins Bing as "their" search engine. Their "answer" to Google. If they are indeed going to spin it this way, then build and use your own damn database.

Hey Ballmer, where's your chair? I think I need to throw it back at you.

Re:For all those who say this isn't cheating... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:59 · Score: 0

They do have their own damned database. This data that they're gathering is just one of many datapoints in that database.
Re:For all those who say this isn't cheating... by MHolmesIV · 2011-02-01 06:26 · Score: 1

It's not cheating, for one simple reason. Google is intimating that it's targeting them, but what's actually happening, if you read the article, is that Bing Toolbar is recording your searches, and which site _you_ found most relevant (by selecting it from the search results) and then using that data to improve it's searches. If you were using Bing as a search engine, it would target that, if you use Yahoo, it targets that. It's not "copying" anything, it's just using actual user data as a weighting function in it's search algorithm.
Re:For all those who say this isn't cheating... by SpinyNorman · 2011-02-01 06:55 · Score: 1

Seeing what results a human finds relevant out of a bunch of machine predictions (aka search results) seems a rather obvious and beneficial search engine enhancement. Whether the click-throughs come from page 1 (or 42) of Google's results, Page 42 (or 1) of Bing's, or from paying college students to answer questionaires, or whatever, is entirely irrelevant.
Maybe rather than whining about Microsoft improving Bing in this way, Google should be improving their own search engine the same way, or wouldn't it be surprising (NOT!) if they were already doing this and their page 1 results include yesterdays page 2 results that got lots of click-thrus.
This is a non-story, or at least a non-outrage. It's mildly interesting at best.
Re:For all those who say this isn't cheating... by makomk · 2011-02-01 07:58 · Score: 1

It's not "copying" anything, it's just using actual user data as a weighting function in it's search algorithm.
Bit more than that. The Bing Toolbar is apparently taking Google search results which it would never associate with that query at all because there's absolutely no information linking the results with the query, and inserting them into their own results for the page.
Re:For all those who say this isn't cheating... by MHolmesIV · 2011-02-01 09:27 · Score: 1

But there _is_ information linking the result with the query. The user visited that site after making the query.
Note in the article the google engineers were told to click on the links. By doing so they now have linked the result to the query.
I would be very _very_ surprised if google doesn't do the exact same thing in their system. The site that most people visit when searching for a term will bubble to the top. The only difference is they probably only do it with their own searches, whereas the Bing toolbar reports all searches, irrespective of which engine is used for the search.
Re:For all those who say this isn't cheating... by makomk · 2011-02-06 22:25 · Score: 1

But there _is_ information linking the result with the query. The user visited that site after making the query.
In other words, the only reason that Bing knows to link that result with that query is because Google does it. If Google didn't return that result, Bing would never be able to figure it out.

I would be very _very_ surprised if google doesn't do the exact same thing in their system. The site that most people visit when searching for a term will bubble to the top. The only difference is they probably only do it with their own searches
You'll notice that Google has made no objection to Bing doing this with their own searches. They're only objecting to Bing doing it to Google searches as a way of copying Google's search results.

Sting? Cheating? by SpinyNorman · 2011-02-01 05:53 · Score: 1

Sounds like someone's getting a bit over-excited here.

Since when is improving a product cheating, and does Google really need a "sting" to figure out that Microsoft is trying to (shock! horror!) keeping an eye on Google using the results to improve Bing?

It seems that Google's complaint (not "complain" you illiterate mofos) is that Bing is just tweaking results instead of investing time/money making those results come out of an algorithm, but I'd be very surprised if Google themselves don't have a zillion special rules in addition to their magical page rank.

Re:Sting? Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:15 · Score: 0

Since when is improving a product cheating
When it is done in an unethical way.

does Google really need a "sting" to figure out that Microsoft is trying to (shock! horror!) keeping an eye on Google using the results to improve Bing?
They are not just keeping an eye on google. They are keeping an eye on the clicks of users, without telling them.

but I'd be very surprised if Google themselves don't have a zillion special rules in addition to their magical page rank.
That you don't know how Google search works does not excuse Microsoft's behavior.
Re:Sting? Cheating? by SpinyNorman · 2011-02-01 06:38 · Score: 1

That you don't know how Google search works does not excuse Microsoft's behavior.
Well, no, it wouldn't, but it seems your knowledge of Google is based on some antiquated notion of all their results being generated purely by some generic "links confer credit" page rank algorithm... That may have been true when they started, but nowadays Google's results reflect all sorts of special cases that kick-in based on query intent prediction/analysis. There's been plenty of mention of this in the press by Google engineers. For some very trivial examples look what happens when you search for an address, or for anything that looks like a conversion.
Re:Sting? Cheating? by GameboyRMH · 2011-02-01 08:45 · Score: 1

Did you RTFA? They just plain copied top search results for specific strings.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Sting? Cheating? by Rockoon · 2011-02-01 10:36 · Score: 1

He read the article, you didn't.

You can ask him if he read it or not, but I don't have to ask you. I know that if you did bother to read it, than you didn't comprehend it. Nowhere does the article state what you are claiming.. only the slashdot summary hints at what you are claiming.

--
"His name was James Damore."
Re:Sting? Cheating? by GameboyRMH · 2011-02-01 12:47 · Score: 1

I see I missed one sentence:

They were also told to click on the top results.
So Microsoft is tracking users' searches for specific strings on Google, and giving links they commonly click higher rankings.
But is this any better? Now it just seems that they're violating users' privacy in addition to plagiarizing Google's search results.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Sting? Cheating? by unity100 · 2011-02-02 05:09 · Score: 1

so then ? does that make copying OTHER search engines, valid ? so if i set up a search engine, and instead of devising an algorithm to decide what is relevant internet wide, using all websites, i go to only SEARCH engines and use their results to determine relevancy, its ok ?

--
Read radical news here
Re:Sting? Cheating? by Rockoon · 2011-02-03 01:38 · Score: 1

So Microsoft is tracking users' searches for specific strings on Google, and giving links they commonly click higher rankings.
No, you still don't get it. You are ALMOST there tho.

Microsoft is tracking what users enter into search boxes, and then associates those search terms with the sites that they then visit.

This is, in fact, a component of how many search engines have worked for a very long time. From altavista to yahoo. The difference is only where the information is collected. It used to be that search engines would return search results that had specially crafted links that bounced the users later clicks through the search provider (via a dynamic redirect page. perhaps www.altavista.com/redirect?thesityoureallywanted.com/thepageyoureallywanted.html) These days search engines dont use redirects for this collection mechanism, but instead they all do it in other way.

--
"His name was James Damore."
Re:Sting? Cheating? by GameboyRMH · 2011-02-03 02:22 · Score: 1

Yeah I do get it.

Microsoft is tracking what users enter into search boxes, and then associates those search terms with the sites that they then visit.
That is what I said earlier:

So Microsoft is tracking users' searches for specific strings on Google, and giving links they commonly click higher rankings.
...in different words.
What Microsoft is going different from what all the other search engines did, is they're collecting information on results from another search engine that is not their own, through the browser, and using that information to better their own search engine. All the others only collect this information about their own search engines using a server-side or partially JS-based mechanism (Google still uses redirect pages for logged-in users BTW.)
Microsoft is using information passed between IE users and a competitor's search engine to improve their own search engine. It's plagiarism and a breach of user privacy.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel

Mountweazels by jfengel · 2011-02-01 05:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

Dictionary makers deliberately introduce "mountweazels", fake words designed to catch people violating their copyrights. Map makers use "copyright traps", fake streets.

Sounds like Google did this on a one-time basis, but it seems to me that they could make it permanent. If nothing else, finding the mountweazels could be fun.

They already have a few jokes interspersed, like "anagram" and "french military victories". I wonder if Bing shows unexpected results for those.

Re:Mountweazels by burris · 2011-02-01 06:17 · Score: 1

Google search results and rankings are generated algorithmically. Since there is no creativity involved it isn't protected by Copyright.
Re:Mountweazels by Cowmonaut · 2011-02-01 06:18 · Score: 1

IIRC, the French military victories thing wasn't actually a joke. At the time, that really was what would happen if you Google'd "French military victories". Over time, as the albinoblacksheep page with the screenshot of this grew more popular you got different results. With the Google jokes like anagram and I'm Feeling Lucky when searching "miserable failure" or "worst president ever" (returning G W Bush Jr's biography) you can still get those results by making those searches now. You can't with the French military victories thing. Oddly enough, the top search results for that still doesn't actually have any French military victories.
Re:Mountweazels by jfengel · 2011-02-01 06:25 · Score: 1

True. But catching your opponents stealing your results is very good marketing fodder. "Google: so good even Bing uses it."
Re:Mountweazels by Cowmonaut · 2011-02-01 06:26 · Score: 2

Correction. Apparently the French military victories thing was just a practical joke by some Canadian student, and the George Bush thing was a Google Bomb. Makes sense when you compare the style of Google's jokes to them: Life, the universe and everything giving a Google calculator result of 42, the anagram of anagram being nag a ram as your intended search if you Google anagram...
Re:Mountweazels by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:37 · Score: 0

I found this without Mountweazels in the week Bing launched using which are sets of search words that only return one result.
I was getting the same URL back from Google, which had had a decade or more to build its index, as I was from Bing, which was very new.
So I figured that Bing was taking my search query, feeding it to Google and building their index with Google's results. Not surprising really.
Re:Mountweazels by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:49 · Score: 0

They already have a few jokes interspersed, like "anagram" and "french military victories". I wonder if Bing shows unexpected results for those.
You forgot "recursion"
Re:Mountweazels by Phaedrus420 · 2011-02-01 09:04 · Score: 0

In addition to fake streets, they also just move some real features. I noticed a certain S curve that I am familiar with was shown in my atlas, but about a mile down the road from it's actual location.

--
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Re:Mountweazels by MmmmAqua · 2011-02-01 17:32 · Score: 1

So every Tom Clancy novel from Rainbow Six on can't be copyrighted?

--
Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
Re:Mountweazels by richlv · 2011-02-01 20:28 · Score: 1

regarding maps, labeled as "copyright easter eggs" by openstreetmap :)
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs
"Printed Maps that "Lye"" is a nice statement :)

--
Rich
Re:Mountweazels by nog_lorp · 2011-02-01 23:13 · Score: 1

Wlonkful must be one of these.
Re:Mountweazels by coolmadsi · 2011-02-02 03:23 · Score: 1

They already have a few jokes interspersed, like "anagram" and "french military victories". I wonder if Bing shows unexpected results for those.
The "french military victories" one was from another site mimicking the Google layout, although it was popular so displayed if you clicked on "I'm feeling lucky", so people thought it actually was from Google.
Re:Mountweazels by TriezGamer · 2011-02-03 23:50 · Score: 1

"French Military Victories" has nothing to do with anything Google ever did, but is the result of a prank by Albino Sheep having the top search result and spoofing Google's search results page. Many other spoofs have been made along the same lines.

Makes sense by RazorSharp · 2011-02-01 05:54 · Score: 1

I've noticed in a lot of these Google vs. Bing articles, someone would give an example search to demonstrate Google's better search ability. Then someone would reply to the post later saying, "Well Bing can find it now, and it hasn't even been that long."

Maybe Google could deny Microsoft's servers access to their website. Or maybe get real clever and set up an algorithm that sends MS servers bogus information when they inquire to make their search results completely irrelevant.

--
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."

Re:Makes sense by RazorSharp · 2011-02-01 06:08 · Score: 1

I hate replying to myself but upon reading the article, I was wrong: they're not using their servers to search Google, they're piggybacking off of data Internet Explorer stores. I still think Google could figure out an algorithm to exploit this and send bunk information (wouldn't it be funny if Bing returned pornography results for practically anything searched?), it would just be a little more complicated. Fortunately, they have the software engineers to do it.
Or, Google could just ban IE, but that's pretty risky. When IE users visit Google they could be met with a page that says, "We're sorry, we are no longer compatible with Internet Explorer because it returns our search results to Microsoft, effectively slowing down your computer in the same manner as malware. Please try Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera."
It'd be a hell of a way to run IE into the ground, but they'd risk losing some customers to Bing or Yahoo. I think it would work. If IE wasn't copying Google's search results, then they couldn't ban IE without making it an anti-trust issue. But now they have a legitimate reason to ban it. I say do it, go for the jugular.

--
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Re:Makes sense by BarryJacobsen · 2011-02-01 06:20 · Score: 1

For every search performed with IE, have the first result be "Internet Explorer Filled with Viruses, Better Alternatives Available" - then when anyone searches for anything on Bing, they'll know not to use IE. P.S. I'm aware this would be trivial to defeat on MS's part.

--
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
Re:Makes sense by anyGould · 2011-02-01 06:57 · Score: 1

Maybe Google could deny Microsoft's servers access to their website. Or maybe get real clever and set up an algorithm that sends MS servers bogus information when they inquire to make their search results completely irrelevant.
Since Bing is grabbing the data from the end user, there isn't really a way to "poison the well" that doesn't also screw all the users.
Not that I would personally do such a thing, but I'd love to see a toolbar/script that just happens to send Microsoft some bogus information... maybe the aforementioned "everything links to goatse"?
Re:Makes sense by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:13 · Score: 0

The problem is that MS isn't asking for results from Google - it's getting sent them by users of MS's toolbar. Google would have to find someway of detecting and blocking the toolbar from reading their pages, which would just lead to an arms race.
Re:Makes sense by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:15 · Score: 0

Wouldn't that be spun off as using a monopoly in a 1 industry to achieve dominance in another ?
Re:Makes sense by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 10:21 · Score: 0

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Imitation... by MoldySpore · 2011-02-01 05:57 · Score: 1

...is the sincerest form of flattery

Is anyone really surprised by this? Microsoft has been "borrowing" and "copying" since it's first iteration of Windows.

--

"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."

Re:Imitation... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 10:43 · Score: 0

Since its first iteration of DOS, you mean!

Reminds me of an old radio station bumper by RevWaldo · 2011-02-01 05:57 · Score: 1

"ATTENTION ALL OTHER RADIO STATIONS! ... Ha! Caught ya listening! Z-105!"

(Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. ftfy.)

.

--
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!

Re:Reminds me of an old radio station bumper by RazorSharp · 2011-02-01 06:12 · Score: 0

That's awesome, Slashdot slapped you on the wrist for using too many caps. Your caps were appropriate in this case, but it's a clever way to knock some sense into those idiots who type with caps locked on all the time.

--
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Re:Reminds me of an old radio station bumper by RevWaldo · 2011-02-01 07:07 · Score: 1

Actually if you use "too many" caps /. won't let you post at all. The workaround is to reduce the ratio of upper and lowercase letters in the post. (Like, say, going meta and pasting the error message into the body of the comment.)

.

--
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!

Not surprised. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 05:59 · Score: 0

This is the definition of 'innovation' at Microsoft. Why is anyone surprised?

Since they grab the results and use the exact same algorithm that Google does as part of their results, could they be said to be in patent violation?

Re:Not surprised. by Alex+Belits · 2011-02-01 07:41 · Score: 1

Can you read? Microsoft did not imitate Google algorithm, they copied the results verbatim, including the nonsense ones.

--
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.

So.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:04 · Score: 0

.....use firefox?

Re:So.... by imric · 2011-02-01 07:00 · Score: 1

Nah. MS has, can and will use Windows Update to force-install an uninstallable (via normal methods) firefox extension. There is no escape as long as you use their software.
But - supposedly the market 'chose' this so just bend over and relax.

--
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!

The 1600 Club by harvey+the+nerd · 2011-02-01 06:06 · Score: 2

Copying other people's work is a fine old Microsoft tradition.

I'd just like to know who Bill G sat next to when he took the SAT :)

I'm impressed with google's restraint by Thud457 · 2011-02-01 06:06 · Score: 2

I'd send 'em all directly to goatse.
unless that's what they were searching for

--

the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Re:I'm impressed with google's restraint by SnarfQuest · 2011-02-01 06:29 · Score: 2

I'd send them to a page that says "Microsoft recommends that you use Google for this search topic"

--
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Re:I'm impressed with google's restraint by GrumblyStuff · 2011-02-01 19:10 · Score: 1

Indeed. If I was searching for goatse and all I got was a giant, gaping void of nothing, I'd pretty disappointed.

Nice by bgspence · 2011-02-01 06:09 · Score: 1

I think i'll build my own search engine, Bingle, to merge the results from them both and be the best search engine of all.

Re:Nice by wideBlueSkies · 2011-02-01 06:48 · Score: 1

You'll get sued for reusing Bing's name. Go figure.

--
Huh?
Re:Nice by aiht · 2011-02-01 16:12 · Score: 1

If you got Lara Bingle on board, I reckon she could get away with using her own name.
I can see it now... Bingle, the Australian search engine: "Where the bloody hell is it?"

google instant vs duckduckgo by GodWasAnAlien · 2011-02-01 06:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

People are not leaving Google because other search engines are getting better.

Rather, people are leaving because Google is getting worse and has lost focus of search simplicity.

Google instant drove me out.

If start typing and several pages fly by per second, this increases the garbage to information ratio, is inefficient, and disruptive. Often, the result is a blank page.

I switched to duckduckgo, as it simple, and the results are good.

Occasionally, I will use !g in the duckduckgo search to access google, but I try to avoid it.

Google should stop worrying about Bing, and look within.

Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

DuckDuckGo is largely redisplaying results from Bing, which as this article points out, is itself taking results from Google. So if you think the results there are good, that's not really a surprise - they come from the big G.
Also, you can easily switch Instant off if you don't like it.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:21 · Score: 0

Proof - DuckDuckGo displaying the fake results too. Sandra Lee is the first result.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:21 · Score: 1

You do know you can turn instant off, right?
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by dubstar · 2011-02-01 06:22 · Score: 1

You know, there's a little option right beside the search box to turn 'google instant' off. You can also turn it off in settings. And, it also appears to default to off if you're not signed in.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by zoom-ping · 2011-02-01 06:23 · Score: 1

You can turn Google instant off and tweak other features as well, you know. It's not like they're forcing you to use it.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:29 · Score: 0

Then turn Instant off, if that's all that bothers you about Google.
Why do you care if some results swing by before you finish typing? You're getting to the same place just as fast, unless you're slowing down your typing to read the new suggested results with every keystroke.
Still, you're sweating over maybe a second per query.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:32 · Score: 0

Then why not turn instant off, rather than bitch about it. If you can't work that out, you really should be reading elsewhere.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by GodWasAnAlien · 2011-02-01 06:46 · Score: 1

> option right beside the search box to turn 'Google instant' off.
Really, every time I go to Google?
> You can also turn it off in settings ?
I don't stay logged in to Google.
> And, it also appears to default to off if you're not signed in.
I wish. That is not true. I wish it was, then perhaps I would still use Google.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:49 · Score: 0

You can turn Google Instant off. I can understand complaining about the feature -- I think it is terrible, myself -- but isn't it more work to change search engines than to just turn the feature off?
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by GodWasAnAlien · 2011-02-01 06:56 · Score: 1

The "proof" is also in the duckduckgo FAQ...
https://duckduckgo.com/faq.html
> How do you get your results?
>
> From over 30 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites, Yahoo! "BOSS",
> "embed.ly", "WolframAlpha", "EntireWeb", "Bing" & "Blekko".
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:58 · Score: 0

You CAN turn Google instant off, you know.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:02 · Score: 0

Why don't you just turn it off then? It would take you all of two seconds. They put the button to do so in plain sight..
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2011-02-01 07:05 · Score: 1

Google instant drove me out.
If start typing and several pages fly by per second, this increases the garbage to information ratio, is inefficient, and disruptive.
That's what noscript is for. I turned it off once to see what all the "instant" fuss was and immediately turned noscript back on and haven't had to deal with that shit since.

--
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:05 · Score: 0

You cannot turn it off permanently.
I keep no persistent browser data, and generally do not log into search sites.
Turning it off over and over again is quite annoying.
I am happy with Duckduckgo results. I would be glad to try others, with the following in mind:
http://donttrack.us/
For me, Google would need to address much more than google instant in order for me to consider it again.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:09 · Score: 0

I just duckduckgo'd something I routinely search use a Google Lucky Search for and the page I expect isn't even in the duckduckgo results.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:17 · Score: 0

No one cares.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Bengie · 2011-02-01 07:19 · Score: 1

I love Google instant.
I have already had several times where one of the fleeting pages that popped up while typing had useful keywords that I never thought about. I've also seen results pop-up for a split second that would have only shown in a partial query.
I type while looking at my screen and I can usually pull out keywords from the pages that pop-up, even for the 1/3rd of a second that they do.
I guess 16 years of playing video games had gotten my visual senses trained. I don't find it annoying, I find it VERY useful. What I don't find useful yet is that preview feature they added.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:20 · Score: 0

Or you could just disable Google instant.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:32 · Score: 0

You cannot turn it off permanently.
I keep no persistent browser data, and generally do not log into search sites.
This is a bit disingenuous. You can turn it off permanently. However, you have chosen not to use the functionality that allows decisions to be made permanent, therefore Google Instant, just like anything else, cannot be turned off permanently by you.
You have every right to make that choice, but don't blame Google for providing options when you're actively preventing the ability for your selections to be persisted.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:44 · Score: 0

There is a button right next to the search bar in Google, 'instant on-instant off'. Turn it off if you don't like it.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:59 · Score: 0

> option right beside the search box to turn 'Google instant' off.
Really, every time I go to Google?
No, just once.
Turn on your damned cookies. Don't blame Google because you've chosen to disallow persistent settings.
If you want to complain about something, complain about the annoying "preview" that they've added, which, as far as I can tell, cannot be turned off.
Not that this has driven me away from Google. They still provide the best search results I've seen, so I continue to use them.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by IGnatius+T+Foobar · 2011-02-01 08:01 · Score: 1

Rather, people are leaving because Google is getting worse and has lost focus of search simplicity.
Google instant drove me out.
Google should stop worrying about Bing, and look within.
Mr. Ballmer? Is that you?

--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:02 · Score: 0

That's the reason I use google's SSL option exclusively now, no instant nonsense.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:06 · Score: 0

you *do* know you can turn "instant" off almost, um, instantly, right?
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by gencha · 2011-02-01 08:10 · Score: 1

You know you can disable Google Instant, right?
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:31 · Score: 0

You know there is a button to disable Instant search, right? It's right next to the text field.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:32 · Score: 0

No one is leaving google. My google instant searches yield the same results as non-instant search results. I don't see how it increases garbage to information ratio. Perhaps you should go back on your ADD meds to prevent such trivial matters from distracting you.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:45 · Score: 0

Rather, people are leaving because Google
you leaving Google != people leaving Google
If the reason you don't use something is an option that is easily disabled; please don't tell people about it. You are not a good a good judge of quality.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:29 · Score: 0

> you leaving Google != people leaving Google
Here is a search for you on your favorite search site: site:www.google.com google instant
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.google.com+google+instant
Top five results:
1 Google Instant : Google search basics - Web Search Help
2 google instant sucks get rid of it NOW! - Web Search Help
3 Chrome Instant - Google Chrome Help
4 How do I turn off Google instant preview? - Web Search Help
5 HATE Google Instant. Should not be FORCED. Should be Opt-IN and ...
Or better:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.google.com+google+instant+hate
http://www.facebook.com/nogoogleinstant
Yep, no-one is complaining.
> If the reason you don't use something is an option that is easily disabled; please don't tell people about it. You are not a good a good judge of quality.
If by "easy", you mean disabling it with every visit, you are confused. If you are referring to other persistent options, you making assumptions about browser security preferences.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:33 · Score: 0

Turning Google Instant off certainly is a hassle...
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Dhalka226 · 2011-02-01 10:23 · Score: 1

Top five results: (lots of hate)
What's your point?
For starters, he never said people aren't complaining -- he said that the GGP not using Google anymore doesn't mean any other number of people are not using Google anymore.
More to the point, bitching is always more common than praise. Comparatively few people write a "letter" (letter, email, forum post, blog entry, etc) to talk about how much they enjoy something and want it to stay. That's simply a reality of human nature. And in this case, it's going to be exacerbated. What's the reason to post about Google Instant being great? It's already there, it's free, you're not trying to convince anybody to use it. People will post, overwhelmingly, if they want it to go away--not to stay.

you are referring to other persistent options, you making assumptions about browser security preferences.
Blame the stateless web. If you don't want cookies to exist on your system, that's your choice -- but you fully make it with the knowledge that some things on the web are simply not going to work for you. If that drives you away from Google, that's certainly your choice -- but let's not pretend you are in anything approaching the majority. Or even a minority worth redesigning things around.
Honestly, what surprised me most about your post and the GGP post was that anybody searches through the website anymore. In Chrome I use the Chrome bar (which I have fallen in love with). In Firefox I use either the Google firefox bar or the built-in search box. Either way, I seldom see Instant unless I need to actually refine the search -- and in that relatively rare case, I can cope with it even though I don't particularly like it (and yes, I could also turn it off--but I care about it little enough to not even go through that effort).
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 14:07 · Score: 0

Switching it off is a PAIN, because it's on by default.
So every different computer/browser that I use Google on always has this same problem. It's a real turn off.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 15:39 · Score: 0

You can "turn it off" by using https://encrypted.google.com/
Side effects may include making your search traffic encrypted.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by bannable · 2011-02-01 16:10 · Score: 1

I guess you're one of those people who never pay attention to search settings? For example, the little button to the immediate right of the search button which toggles instant...

--
"If you see a man on a horse, he is likely an enemy. Kill the man and eat the horse."
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 17:02 · Score: 0

enabling cookies and enabling persistent cookies (across browser sessions), are two different things.
Yes, "preview" sucks too.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2011-02-01 17:34 · Score: 1

I guess you're one of those people who never pay attention to search settings? For example, the little button to the immediate right of the search button which toggles instant...
Are you telling me to stop blocking google's cookies?

--
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2011-02-01 19:05 · Score: 1

You have every right to make that choice, but don't blame Google for providing options when you're actively preventing the ability for your selections to be persisted.
There's nothing stopping google from enabling a bookmarkable URL that defaults to turning instant search off. I can add &safe=off to the URL to disable safe-search without the use of cookies. They could do it like that, or even do a subdomain like simple.google.com.

--
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by nog_lorp · 2011-02-01 23:14 · Score: 1

They have always targeted their audience. Techies used it first so it was good (people were looking for good results). Now you search a part number and turn up a pop hit.
Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by evilviper · 2011-02-02 17:33 · Score: 1

Clusty has, for several years now, returned better search results than google. It has the added advantage of automatically displaying a list of categories and a count of results under each, allowing you to quickly glance over an see if it appears worthwhile to refine the search.
The downside forever has been that clusty largely ignores word order, and can't be forced to do an exact string search, so searching on a segment of song lyrics, or a series of common words that are only unique in their arrangement, becomes a nightmare. still the results are good enough to make that limitation tolerable.
There's one more limitation now. When it became Yippy, it got a new limitation, a strict censorship policy that can't be shut off, at least not yet.

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Re:google instant vs duckduckgo by ajs · 2011-02-02 21:28 · Score: 1

... people are leaving [Google search] because Google is getting worse ...
Citation, please?

TFA image by igloonaut · 2011-02-01 06:11 · Score: 1

If you haven't read the linked article, the image they used is worth the click if you're familiar with the source. I lol'd anyway.

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Kirkland Signature

Get a load of some of the comments by doperative · 2011-02-01 06:14 · Score: 2

"It’s difficult for me to feel a sense of injustice or outrage with any of the big search engines, because their products have so clearly immitated each other for so long. Google isn’t at all pure in this area" Chris Silver Smith

Do please provide veriable examples of Google copying Microsoft?

"Even your criticism of Google seems aimed at ‘lesser’ offences", Badams

Please provide verifiable examples of Googles greater offences?

"Google aren’t entirely blameless when it comes to being a little bit too creepy about the amount of data they aggregate about users" James Lowery

It's about Bing stealing Google search results to boost their own ranking. Provide verifiable citations where Google does the exact same.

"@Danny I agree and think this will cost Google some credibility and am curious how Google will respond to this situation as well! Great article and thank you for sharing!" Ashley Sellers link

What are you on, or even on about, Microsoft gets caught stealing Google search results and using it to boost Bing search results.

Ironic by kaizendojo · 2011-02-01 06:14 · Score: 1

Since I read this moments earlier on Engadget, like many of the things I see here later...

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. Profit. by commodore64_love · 2011-02-01 06:14 · Score: 2

- embrace the google addon for MS Explorer so you can copy its data

- extend your own MS Bing engine with new features incompatible with the google addon

- extinguish the google addon because it can't use the new MS extensions (or simply disallowing its use in Explorer 10)

- profit

.

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Yeah but... by thestudio_bob · 2011-02-01 06:16 · Score: 1

Well, to be fair, maybe if Google wasn't copying other peoples stuff I'd feel sorry for them. iPhone

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The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains /.

Re:Yeah but... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:29 · Score: 1

Ok, I'll bite... In what fashion did Google copy the iPhone?

Like spelling correction but better! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:16 · Score: 0

Bing is way ahead of the game here. Google might be able to detect when you have searched for the wrong word and corrects your results accordingly, but Bing is able to detect when you have searched using the wrong search engine!

TOS by undecim · 2011-02-01 06:16 · Score: 0

https://code.google.com/apis/websearch/terms.html

I'm pretty sure Bing is breaking some rules in 1.4 and 1.5. I'm no lawyer though, so I have no idea what Google can do except make Bing stop.

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The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.

Re:TOS by osu-neko · 2011-02-01 07:08 · Score: 1

No, it isn't. You're looking at the Terms of Service for the Google Web Search API. Since Microsoft is not using the Google Web Search API to do this, it cannot possibly be violating any of the rules here for how that API is to be used.

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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

Re:For all those who say this is cheating... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:17 · Score: 0

this is NOT cheating, plain and simple, for one reason.

Search Engines are not a proctored test.

Publicly available? No. by DragonWriter · 2011-02-01 06:20 · Score: 2

It seems like this is publicly available information.

They are capturing user's search results on Google from users using Internet Explorer with the Bing Toolbar and/or Suggested Sites, and using that to drive Bing rankings. It's not "publicly available information". It does appear to be information within the scope of the privacy policy associated with those features, though.

Re:Publicly available? No. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:04 · Score: 0

They are capturing user's search results on Google

The article does not say this. The article says that the toolbar captures the links that users click on.

That is a distinctly different than scraping google for search results (the bullshit that you are directly claiming.)

Bing spied on end users !!!! by doperative · 2011-02-01 06:22 · Score: 1

"It seems like this is publicly available information. Were there any stipulations, even if informal, on how that information could be used?"

What occurred was the Bing Toolbar peeked at client user Google search results and sent them back to Redmond.

Re:Bing spied on end users !!!! by DragonWriter · 2011-02-01 06:48 · Score: 1

What occurred was the Bing Toolbar peeked at client user Google search results and sent them back to Redmond.
Which certainly seems to be within the scope of the Bing Toolbar TOS, even if using it to shape Bing results the way they do may not be what most people would expect them to do.

Not sure about the rest of the world by rsilvergun · 2011-02-01 06:23 · Score: 2

but Americans are big on getting "the genuine article". From a marketing standpoint, at least, this is cheating, because Google is the 'real deal' and Bing's just a copy cat.

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Re:Not sure about the rest of the world by Grishnakh · 2011-02-01 13:59 · Score: 1

Exactly. But there's a little more to it. Lots of people will get the copy-cat if it's much cheaper, especially if they simply can't afford the 'real deal' (for instance, people buying copies of designer clothes and bags and watches). However, using a search engine is free; it doesn't cost you any more to use Google. So if it's free, why bother with the copy-cat?
Re:Not sure about the rest of the world by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 14:39 · Score: 0

Indeed, insist on getting "Genuine" branded M$ products..... even if they are not M$'s to sell. But don't "pirate" software.

More relevant car analogy by DragonWriter · 2011-02-01 06:26 · Score: 2

Is it cheating if Toyota watches what type of car styles Ford drivers prefer and then makes more cars of that style?

That's not what is happening here. If you need things in the form of a car analogy, its as if Toyota manufactured spark plugs that were installed in cars, some of which were Fords, and the spark plugs had sensors which could be used to detect information about the engine that they were installed in, and transmit that information back to Toyota, and Toyota used that information to feed into their own engine designs.

err... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:30 · Score: 0

and the fact that Google set up Fake and False results doesn't bother you even more?

THAT is more news than MS copying off of someone else's results.

WAKE UP!

Re:err... by Merk42 · 2011-02-01 06:55 · Score: 2

How dare Google fake my honest search results for "hiybbprqag"
Re:err... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:16 · Score: 0

Well if you are searching Google from behind a *.microsoft.com address in order to even see those fake results, then all we have to say is: What are you doing working at Microsoft and using Google instead of Bing?!?
Oh, and you need to adjust your zune on your beltclip better. Your iPod is showing...
Re:err... by Agent0013 · 2011-02-01 08:10 · Score: 1

Right, but the fact that Microsoft fakes the results for pretty much any search doesn't bother you and the other MS fans. Search for Linux and you get all kind of Microsoft sites and sites that say how bad Linux is but not the sites that a person would actually be searching for.

Remember, Bing isn't a search engine, it is a decision engine. Microsoft decides where they want you to go today!

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-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Re:err... by Smask · 2011-02-01 12:05 · Score: 1

Calm down, all information/search providers does it. Maps have intentionally misplaced or nonexistant roads. Phone books with bogus entries.

Why?

They're called markers. If a competitor copies your data, he's copying the errors too. And data full of copy protection markers is easy to prove in front of a judge. Eniro, the largest yellow papers here in Sweden, slammed Gulan thanks to those markers.
Re:err... by Kalriath · 2011-02-01 15:44 · Score: 1

Odd, I searched for Linux on Bing and got not a single anti-Linux site. In fact, I got Wikipedia, Linux.org, Ubuntu.com, Linux.com, and Linux.org.au (I'm in NZ, so it's ranking this up as geographically relevant).

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For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".

What's wrong with this? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:31 · Score: 0

Internet search is all about Internet trends. What are people searching for, what they are picking, how relevant websites are, where people are going.

Why shouldn't someone else take a queue from Google?

If its on the web, then its fair game, period. If Bing is a better search engine because it uses Google as an indicator of popular trends, then it just proves that Microsoft is using their heads.

Lets face it, Google thinks they are the world's indexer of web-content. Since you can't have a monopoly on web content then there is no reason why Google isn't also being used by ANY OTHER search engine for identifying internet trends. In fact Google even offers API's to access this information.

Re:What's wrong with this? by osu-neko · 2011-02-01 07:18 · Score: 1

If its on the web, then its fair game, period.
...and if you this comment is relevant, you've entirely misunderstood what's happening here, since the information Microsoft is using to do this is not on the web. Google's proof that Microsoft was indeed doing what it's doing involved using words like "mbzrxpgjys" that it verified beforehand are NOT on the web. The fact that Bing started producing the same results on that search proved the Microsoft was taking information other than what's on the web to produce results -- specifically, taking information from people's personal computers regarding what they were typing into web searches. In effect, Microsoft is keylogging users to see what they're searching for on Google, and what results they click on when Google returns the results. Neither of these are pieces of information that at on the web. Arguably, neither are pieces of information Microsoft can even have access to without engaging in some pretty gross violations of personal privacy. But it has now been proven that that is exactly what Microsoft is doing.

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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Re:What's wrong with this? by Rockoon · 2011-02-01 10:43 · Score: 1

Isnt that what Google does with analytics, only not nearly as bad a privacy violation (since Bing Toolbar is opt-in)?

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"His name was James Damore."
Re:What's wrong with this? by HermMunster · 2011-02-01 16:05 · Score: 1

The Bing toolbar is often times installed as a drive-by through other installs such as Java. That makes it non-opt-in. And, installing a product that does something such as key-logging or potentially does something that violates your privacy (in a big way) without telling you is not opt-in.
If the EULA described their behavior (key-logging) then it would have been pointed out much earlier by Google, or even other search engines. The fact that so many people had absolutely no clue this was happening is telling. In other words most people had no idea that this was happening so they couldn't have opt'ed in.
I believe Microsoft was the catalyst behind getting a court ruling stating that if your anti-malware software pointed out that a product is malware that you, the malware developer, couldn't sue back. This came about because Microsoft (and others that provided software to detect malware) were being sued just for indicating that a product was malware. It also means that the malware authors can't sue as a business model. Imagine Spybot Search and Destroy or Malwarebytes getting sued out of existence for point out that X product is malware.
Technically, Bing now falls under the category of malware because it is key-logging and it is enticing you to install it without actually informing you of what it is doing.

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You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.

Bing's approach easily spammable by curril · 2011-02-01 06:31 · Score: 1

Spammers can just load up the Bing toolbar, search on the terms that they want to point to their site, and then click on their site where ever it shows up in the results. They can write a script to do it from multiple computers multiple times to create a strong signal, strong enough to bump up their site in Bing's results, especially in searches where other signals are weak or conflicting. Even legitimate sites would be tempted to use this approach to see if they could bump up their rankings from the second page to the first page.

Re:Bing's approach easily spammable by Joe+U · 2011-02-01 06:51 · Score: 1

You're assuming you actually know what Bing's approach is.
For all we know the results could be highly weighted, and I'm betting they are.

Good point by suomynonAyletamitlU · 2011-02-01 06:31 · Score: 4, Informative

You know, people complain that Chrome--built on Chromium, an open source browser, could be sending who knows what to Google about your browsing habits. However, Chrome is entirely optional and user-installed, whereas IE comes standard with windows--to the point where they got in huge-ass trouble previously for stifling competition with it. But while Google lays its cards out for everyone to see (except for the places where Chrome isn't Chromium, admittedly), in order to forestall objections that they might be doing something like this, Microsoft flat-out does it, behind your back.

Now, some people have said it's a Bing Toolbar thing, and I dunno, not having RTFA; but even so, how often is that going to be shovelware that preys on unwitting users, like every OTHER friggin' IE toolbar? So not only is it preying on Google's algorithm, not only is it stealing user data, it's also coercing unwitting users to be their mule in this attack.

There's nothing you can say that makes this taste even marginally better. It's shit, and the Bing team should be ashamed, if not prosecuted.

Re:Good point by froggymana · 2011-02-01 07:50 · Score: 1

If you are afraid of Google collecting information from you by using Chrome or Chromium you can always use SRware Iron which is basically the same thing, just without tracking stuff.

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"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Re:Good point by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2011-02-01 08:28 · Score: 1

Or just stick with firefox.
Re:Good point by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-02-01 09:02 · Score: 1

I don't really get what Iron adds, given I can disable everything relevant by unchecking a few boxes in the config panel. I guess if I was paranoid, I'd stick to Chromium...

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Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Re:Good point by Kalriath · 2011-02-01 15:13 · Score: 1

It adds free money for the guy that founded SRWare to get free money from repacking Chrome.
See: http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.html

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For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".

Google's new slogan by Trent+Hawkins · 2011-02-01 06:32 · Score: 1

Google's new slogan: even Bing Googles.

Pathetic by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:32 · Score: 0

They must have a special Pathetic CopyCat department in Redmond. Everything, absolutely everything this company does is a 'Me-Too' effort in one form or another. Why are they still mentioned as an example of US technical innovativenes? Please one example of one succes story they came up with themselves.

Pathetic!

And if Google is down? by diretalk · 2011-02-01 06:33 · Score: 1

What are we gonna do if Google is down then? We are doomed!!!

Stupid by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:35 · Score: 0

Human beings would make terrible batteries, much better to simply get the energy direct from the source the human would otherwise use.

Bing does not deny this != Copies Google's results by Tawnos · 2011-02-01 06:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

Most likely, Bing is acquiring clickthrough data from textbox input and pairing it with link click followthrough. That is, Bing watches what people type and what links they click after typing it. Did Google ever try other mechanisms to munge results, such as using an internal search page (i.e. one where it uses some proprietary engine to search, say, a forum) and see if Bing started reporting those results? If so, it would indicate that coming from Google had nothing to do with the mechanism of acquisition, and that it was strictly parsing URL or textbox entries combined with link clickthrough. Implying that Bing's response of "we use a lot of vectors" is the same as saying "we steal stuff from Google, so what" is trolltastic at best, and blatantly misleading at worst.

Yahoo should never have close down it's search eng by Zelgadiss · 2011-02-01 06:37 · Score: 1

With the shutting down of Yahoo's independent search engine efforts, and Bing really just relying on Google for results.

Doesn't this mean we only really have one search engine online? (ignoring small little known search engines)

Don't suppose Yahoo could start back up it search engine.

Petals around the rose by roman_mir · 2011-02-01 06:38 · Score: 1

Reminded me of this story about Gates petals around the rose, though of-course in this case it's more like 'evolutionary gene stealing'.

Bing is getting there, right, does it matter how it's getting there? So it's copying the results - evolution is about copying the results from more successful beans, so with this move MS is admitting that Google is more successful.

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You can't handle the truth.

Re:Terrible. but very Microsoft by hduff · 2011-02-01 06:38 · Score: 1, Informative

They should really reinvent the wheel.

Microsoft re-invent the wheel? They don't innovate. They are not a market leader. That's not what they do well.

They copy other's successful ideas and try to exploit a market, then apply their embrace-extend-extinguish approach to eliminate the competition through lock-in.

Microsoft Bob
ActiMates Interactive Barney
Microsoft Network (MSN)
WebTV
Chromeffects
Microsoft Zune
Microsoft Kin Phones
MSN and MSN search
Microsoft Venus
Microsoft Virtual Earth
Microsoft Microscope
Microsoft Encarta
Microsoft Vizact
Microsoft Java Runtime Environment
Microsoft At Work Operating System
Microsoft Vine
Microsoft Origami
Microsoft Mira
Microsoft MN-500 router
docx format
Windows Mobile 7.0
and on and on ...

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"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert

I've been saying this by kubernet3s · 2011-02-01 06:39 · Score: 1

My organization's network computers all use IE with the Bing searchbar pre-selected. You can't change it to Google. When I want to search, I go use the search bar out of habit or laziness, and no matter what I search for, I am given something like local business listings. Doing a search for resistor color codes gives like Resistor bagels or what resistor to wear for summer. I exaggerate, but the results are almost always almost totally useless, and I end up copying the search term and pasting it into Google and getting to the page I need. I have long said that Bing should just have button which enters the search into Google. Good on ya, MS.

Google is failing by funkify · 2011-02-01 06:39 · Score: 1

That Google would need to set up a sting makes one wonder if they are not a little insecure about their engine. In the past week I have run into a couple of situations where Google absolutely failed.

Try searching Google for "Martin Guitars" or "Jet City Amps". The official sites aren't even on the first page of results on Google. On Bing? They're both the first result.

I hate Microsoft as much as they deserve (which is a lot) but whenever I am unimpressed with Google, I try Bing and am getting more and more impressed with it. I can't blame them for using their competition to their advantage.

Re:Google is failing by nowen2dot · 2011-02-01 08:49 · Score: 1

I think the main point of TFA was that Bing is using Google results to place at the top for misspelled search terms rather than work on their own spelling corrections. They claim that Google has put a lot of resources into their spelling corrections and Bing is merely placing Google's result at the top when Bing's algorithm doesn't produce good results.

I don't see any clear-cut violations of terms or anything illegal here, but it does give me a bad feeling that they seem to be inserting Google's result at the top without something like No results for misplled jabberish nothing...but here's what people are finding on Google.

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I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx
Re:Google is failing by adamofgreyskull · 2011-02-01 08:57 · Score: 1

Try searching Google for "Martin Guitars" or "Jet City Amps". The official sites aren't even on the first page of results on Google. On Bing? They're both the first result.
Just did. Top results, both. So it looks like each of our anecdotal evidence cancels the other out. Your move.

Ads by zlogic · 2011-02-01 06:39 · Score: 1

Since a large portion of Google's income is generated by ads, Bing showing Google results is identical to people who record TV shows, remove ads and put the show on The Pirate Bay.
I'm pretty sure you aren't allowed to generate requests to Google search through the same interface as web browsers. In fact you'll get a captcha if you post too much requests from the same IP. You are supposed to use the APIs, which require registrations and possibly pay some fee. So this is probably not a surprise to Google.

Not Publicly Available Information! by eldavojohn · 2011-02-01 06:40 · Score: 5, Informative

It seems like this is publicly available information.

But it's not, you obviously didn't read the article. Here was the process: 1) Google employee makes sure some fake word does not exist in google or bing search results. 2) Said employee points google's cache results of that word to some random page. 3) Said employee uses Internet Explorer at his desk at Google to make the search appear in Google, then selects the only link as the correct thing he was looking for and Bing somehow acquires this information. 4) Search now appears in Bing.

I've highlighted the step that isn't really public information. The step that indicates to Bing that the link is interesting to someone, the step that they are acquiring through internet explorer! Total privacy violation, in my opinion.

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My work here is dung.

Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:13 · Score: 0

It does sound sleazy, but how is this more of a privacy violation than google-analytics.com (for the average, non NoScript user)?
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by zurmikopa · 2011-02-01 10:53 · Score: 1

That information gathering is opt-in, so it isn't quite as big of a deal. My guess is that Microsoft wanted to improve their search results by seeing what users actually clicked on for a search. They thought "well, we get some good data from seeing what they click on when they search on Bing, but we can get *vastly more* data if we also gather what people click on for other search engines". That is, I'm not convinced their intent was to specifically take results from Google, but rather to get metrics on what their users found to be relevant results, no matter their preferred search engine. However, when the search terms didn't previously exist, the actions of a few gave more importance to these metrics than was warranted, and essentially imported Google's data since having some result was better than having no result.
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by dudeman500 · 2011-02-01 11:49 · Score: 1

How can it be privacy violation? If you RTFA you would have seen that the user is agreeing to it in the EULA or "privacy policy" or whatever they call it. "When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with standard computer information. To help protect your privacy, the information is encrypted when sent to Microsoft. Information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included."
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by eedlee · 2011-02-01 12:02 · Score: 1

1) Google employee makes sure some fake word does not exist in google or bing search results. 2) Said employee points google's cache results of that word to some random page. 3) Said employee uses Internet Explorer at his desk at Google to make the search appear in Google, then selects the only link as the correct thing he was looking for and Bing somehow acquires this information. 4) Search now appears in Bing.

Isn't this the exact process Google implements when a user searches with Chrome to determine the most relevant results? So in essence IE behavior now mimics another browsers behavior? Doesn't even sound moderately intriguing.
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by DrInequality · 2011-02-01 12:47 · Score: 1

It seems like this is publicly available information.
But it's not, you obviously didn't read the article. Here was the process: 1) Google employee makes sure some fake word does not exist in google or bing search results. 2) Said employee points google's cache results of that word to some random page. 3) Said employee uses Internet Explorer at his desk at Google to make the search appear in Google, then selects the only link as the correct thing he was looking for and Bing somehow acquires this information. 4) Search now appears in Bing.

Well... Step 1 may cause Bing to start trying to index said fake word. The step 3(b) where the Google employee clicks on the Google search result for the non-related page will (via the Bing spybar) associate the fake search term with the non-related page (the fake term will appear in the HTTP_REFERRER field).
Spybar: EVIL
Bing crap: probably.
Bing cheating? Not proved.
They're just using their spybar clickstream data as a source of search info, just as Google initially innovated by using link data as a data source, rather than the contents of web pages.
To conclusively prove cheating, they have to show a statistical correlation between the ranking of faked pages on Google and faked pages on Bing. Shame on you Google!

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DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 13:34 · Score: 0

It's not "privacy violation" because you need to a) download and install the Bing toolbar, and b) you need to specifically opt-in for the Suggested Sites feature (which will allow IE to track your browsing habits). It's the same kind of tracking that happens whenever you type anything into the Google Chrome address bar, except you need to specifically opt-into it in IE instead of it being on by default.
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 14:20 · Score: 0

Except that you also should notice they install the toolbars, for which the license agreement says this data can and will be collected.
They were not running vanilla IE.
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 18:47 · Score: 0

They're acquiring it through the Bing toolbar (not IE, as per TFA), which does tell the user it will be collecting data.
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by nog_lorp · 2011-02-01 21:19 · Score: 1

The real wtf here is the concept of IP. Oh noes one group is using another groups publicly available info! Shitstorm.
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 22:43 · Score: 0

You missed the step where the Google employees clicked OK to opt in to two seperate Microsoft data mining schemes. The express purpose of such schemes being to allow Microsoft to analyse what users are actually doing and feed that information back in to Bing (and presumably other things).
I'd be interested to see if this would still happen if they didn't join the data mining schemes. I doubt it would since I'm sure they tried this (after all it would be crippling for Microsoft if that was the case).
I'd also be interested to find out exactly what these 20 engineers did in that time. It's possible that they did these searchs 10s of millions of times through automation and the bogus data they are volunteering to Microsoft affected the result eventually.
It seems to me that the primary thing Microsoft is guilty of is not recognising the bogus data.
Re:Not Publicly Available Information! by j00r0m4nc3r · 2011-02-02 03:27 · Score: 1

Google should hack the toolbar comm protocol and start sending Microsoft bad information. Or is that evil?

Falsification attempt? by WaffleMonster · 2011-02-01 06:42 · Score: 1

Could the plugins just be collecting information that is being used by bing to seed their search engine?

Have the engineers tried setting up a fake search engine and trying the same instead of modifying google?

My take away from TFA is search engine toolbars are a gross invasion of privacy.

Microsoft Bing man quits by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:47 · Score: 0

"Microsoft's principal development manager for its Bing search engine has quit .. These projects involve data mining, machine learning, classification, natural language algorithms, query analysis, entity extraction, metadata extraction from web pages, UX feature design, A/B testing, metrics development/data analysis, and scable [sic] and performant infrastructure engineering"

Even worse by jav1231 · 2011-02-01 06:47 · Score: 1

Someone has written malware that will "Bingify" both of your browsers even if you're only in one. It put a Bing search bar in both Firefox and IE despite only being in Firefox on my roomie's computer. After some searching, I found out to just uninstall "Search Toolbar" from Add/Remove. (Very generic name). It uninstalled but the Bingification remained AND it stripped the file menu from Firefox. I eventually just backed up his bookmarks and re-installed Firefox from scratch. Not saying Microsoft is doing this but I wonder who stands to gain from it?

MS is denying by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 06:48 · Score: 0

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-we-do-not-copy-googles-results/8557

This is fine, as long as it's temporary. by mosb1000 · 2011-02-01 06:49 · Score: 1

So it sounds like Bing doesn't do as well in the misspelling department, and this kind-of makes up for it. If that's the case, this is OK as a short term fix, but by all means Microsoft had better be working on improving the way they handle misspellings if they ever want to displace Google in the search market.

Also, I'm not totally convinced they are deliberately copying Google. Perhaps just saw the search term and the linked website on the same page and implied a match.

Seriously Google? by JustAnotherIdiot · 2011-02-01 06:49 · Score: 1

Seriously? No one cares about Bing, please stop acknowledging them.

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What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?

Can Bing do Exact Text Searching by harl · 2011-02-01 06:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

Can Bing do exact text searching. And by exact I mean exact. Contrary to what Google thinks capitalization and special characters are important. Stop throwing them away Google!

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I find being offended by me offensive.

Re:Can Bing do Exact Text Searching by cbhacking · 2011-02-01 20:25 · Score: 1

If there's a way to make any web search engine do a case-sensitive search, I don't know it. I imagine their indexing automatically case-insensitizes everything. Usually that's a good thing but I can see how it would be annoying at times.

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There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Re:Can Bing do Exact Text Searching by harl · 2011-02-02 11:45 · Score: 1

I agree the vast majority of the time case-insensitivity is fine. However it's really really frustrating when you need sensitivity. For example when the software package you deal with has error messages in the format of [ERRORNAME]. In this case throwing out the special characters and the capitalization throws out everything that makes the search term unique and guarantees that no result will possibly match.
I imagine you're dead on they do it to speed up the results. What a search engine needs to do is have a batch system where I can submit an exact text search and it will get the results back to me in a minute or two.

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I find being offended by me offensive.
Re:Can Bing do Exact Text Searching by ColoradoAuthor · 2011-02-03 04:16 · Score: 1

FYI, there's a case-sensitive search engine (really just a simple filter on top of Google) over at http://case-sensitive-search.appspot.com/ .

the trolls are out in force by doperative · 2011-02-01 06:59 · Score: 1

Martin Guitars

Jet City Amps

Re:the trolls are out in force by funkify · 2011-02-01 07:36 · Score: 1

No, I'm not a troll. I had Google SafeSearch turned on to the Strict setting. I turned it off and got the expected results.
Try turning it on then repeat the searches. You'll get the same result as I previously did.
So maybe Google's search engine is fine, but their SafeSearch is broken. Either way, it's a fail.

Did you mean "French Military Defeats?" by mistapotta · 2011-02-01 07:00 · Score: 1

They already have a few jokes interspersed, like "anagram" and "french military victories". I wonder if Bing shows unexpected results for those.

"french military victories" comes from the comedy site albinoblacksheep.com. "recursion" is another one, though. More poking fun at itself or the search terms rather than "mountweazels"

Re:Did you mean "French Military Defeats?" by jfengel · 2011-02-01 07:26 · Score: 1

I'd been under the impression that it really was something slipped into the Google engine, but I think I was wrong about that. I could have sworn I'd seen it myself, directly on the Google page. I remember it because I was irritated; I'm too familiar with European history to think of it as anything other than very poor taste, very chauvinist. But my memory appears to be faulty.

You say cheating, I say PR Stunt. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:02 · Score: 0

...this is cheating, plain and simple, for one reason.

Microsoft spins Bing as "their" search engine. Their "answer" to Google. If they are indeed going to spin it this way, then build and use your own damn database.

Hey Ballmer, where's your chair? I think I need to throw it back at you.

From what I can tell in the article, all they're doing is building a database of what links their users follow when they search on other sites.

I'm not sure I really believe Google's motives are all that 'Just' in this situation, it seems more like a publicity stunt to me. Think about it- they could have just captured the data that the Bing IE toolbar was 'phoning home' and said "Look, if I search for $Randomstring on anything other than Bing, and then click a URL on the result page, that URL shows up with $Randomstring in combination in this packet stream headed to microsoft.com. Then after a few weeks, we can search $Randomstring on Bing and get the same result". And then we'd know everything.
But instead, we have this kind of clever, kind of not, but quite public display of what is happening. The main difference is the trap Google is using only shows that they are sampling stuff their toolbar users do on Google, they might be sampling everybody. But then suddenly it's not about Bing stealing from Google, it's just another Bing/MS privacy issue and people are fairly numb to that sort of thing anymore.

Now, just for the record I really despise MS, I'm something of a hater, or an anti-fanboy perhaps. I'm not defending Bing at all. Just saying I think this situation is a little bit different in reality than how it's being presented.

Re:Terrible. but very Microsoft by Isaac+Remuant · 2011-02-01 07:02 · Score: 1

The only problem here is that if, hypothetically, they managed to destroy Google. They wouldn't have access to it's results. Therefore, the "quality" of it's searches would decrease.

by the way, Is it bad for them that I don't recognize more than half the things on the list?

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"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.

MS is not copying Google's search results. by Meddik · 2011-02-01 07:07 · Score: 1

Lots of people are reading this as MS copying Google. What they are doing is learning from Google's USERS. Watching what results users find relevant, and bumping that up the list of results makes perfect sense. I am assuming they are doing this will all search engines, not just google.

Meh. by peteblair · 2011-02-01 07:15 · Score: 1

I'm not going to comment on the ethical arguments on this; you can really go either way with it. Far as legality; I am not a lawyer so no comment. In reality I don't care what they do, all I care about it getting the search results I want. I will do the same searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo (In that order) until I find what I need. Most times I get it with Google, however there have been times over the past few months that the collection of content farm results in Google's results is just to much and I move on to Bing or Yahoo.

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Make me a Sandwich. What? Make it yourself. Sudo make me a sandwich. Okay. http://xkcd.com/149/

Patent Infringement by LetterRip · 2011-02-01 07:16 · Score: 1

I suspect that Bing could potentially be on the hook for patent infringement, since they are in effect using Googles patented search algorithm as part of their own search algorithm.

Re:Patent Infringement by asylum_street_blues · 2011-02-01 07:44 · Score: 1

Not at all. I'm sure Microsoft itself has filed a patent for "A Technique for Improving Internet Searches Using Other Search Engines' Results".

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Just because the universe could be a simulation doesn't mean that we're the point of the simulation.
Re:Patent Infringement by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 07:45 · Score: 0

Even if they searched all potential strings and stored the results from google, it's hard to see how that would be patent infringement. Technically, that content is available to the public domain. Watching what users are doing seems creepy, but I'm not sure how'd you get from that to patent infringement. And which patent, really?

So happy for my Mac by el_jake · 2011-02-01 07:17 · Score: 1

I am so happy that I own a Mac. Apple are not evil. And I don't give a F{Notice: Apple Cloud has deleted an obscene word - we take care. Apple Inc.}K about what others say.

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In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.

Re:So happy for my Mac by flimflammer · 2011-02-01 11:53 · Score: 1

5 digit UID trolling Slashdot, never thought I'd see the day...
Re:So happy for my Mac by HermMunster · 2011-02-01 16:13 · Score: 1

What, they don't have the Bing toolbar for Macs? You're making the argument that diversity is the best way to survive and to protect your privacy. So be it. But that applies to all products that aren't the big one, such as Linux.
And, what makes you think that any other product couldn't/wouldn't suffice for Microsoft to accomplish the same thing on a Mac?
And, even if you aren't contributing to the parasitic approach Microsoft has taken it doesn't mean you are immune from the result if you use Bing in any way (or even Yahoo since it is really Bing behind the scenes), nor less immune from the result as parasitical methods generally are damaging to the whole.

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You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.

not reprehensible to copy by bzipitidoo · 2011-02-01 07:19 · Score: 1

A useful distinction is that between copying and plagiarizing.

I did a lot of hard work too, and it must have been useful because it was used. I was paid nothing, except for citations and a trip to a conference. You might include a degree, but then consider that I paid a lot of money for that education. No, the work didn't even get me a job. If anything it made it harder, because now I'm suspected of being too academic for employment in industry. At least no one tried to plagiarize me.

We should have no problem with Bing using Google's search engine. The reprehensible part is the misrepresentation. Bing is plagiarizing Google. They should give Google credit. All it takes is something like "powered by Google" on their site. And if they are leeching off of Google's servers, they shouldn't. Bing should run the software on their own hardware, or pay Google. But the mere use of another's methods should not be viewed as cheating. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

Our systems for compensating people for their ideas and discoveries are terrible.

--
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"

Re:not reprehensible to copy by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:57 · Score: 0

But the mere use of another's methods should not be viewed as cheating.

No, it should be viewed as patent violation...
Re:not reprehensible to copy by alvinrod · 2011-02-01 10:06 · Score: 1

Just curious what field you're degree was in. I'd say a large portion of /. is computer science, information technology, or some kind of engineering degree. I've never known people with those degrees to have problems getting jobs. While I was an undergraduate, a few of our CS professors left because they got offered six figures to work in industry related to their research areas.

On another note, if Bing were smart, they'd mix Google's results in with theirs, shift the position on the page around and see if that affects clicks or if people will still go for the Google results even if they're towards the bottom. They might learn some things in order to provide better results that way.
Re:not reprehensible to copy by bzipitidoo · 2011-02-01 18:26 · Score: 1

CS. But this isn't the 90's any more. No one has ever offered me 6 figures, and this is for a variety of reasons, not least bad market timing. Right now, I'm unemployed, and not looking very hard. Thinking about starting my own business, but I have a lot of doubts about that. I like the small company environment, but I'm not really an entrepreneural sort who wants to start it myself.
I've encountered a lot of trollish interviewers who sure don't act like their companies need good people. They value very specific experience over more general training with intelligence and ability. Even seem to glory in using lame criteria so they can tell the smart guy to get stuffed because he's not qualified, and feel like it was righteously done. Anti-intellectualism is alive and well in America. The interviewee doesn't know enough trivia about a specific programming language. Or worse, the decision was based on measures that can't even pretend to look objective or relevant. The guy didn't act hungry enough, might not be dependable, not a good fit for a sweatshop. I once had a fellow employee tell me he was better than me because he had a wife and baby, and a crushing mortgage. Pardon, but I thought getting in a deep hole financially was dumb? Or he's probably over the age of 40, which is "too old". They play these curious games, then end up hiring someone who codes so badly that it'd make a good story on The Daily WTF, as I saw happen once. But in any case, there's only so much that can be done. And messed up hiring criteria held with religious zeal is often an indication of a messed up company, as I have found. Not always, but often enough. If management is determined to ignore big problems, such as that the customers do not want the product, or that the idea doesn't work, no amount of mere coding excellence will help. And when management keeps right on slamming their heads against brick walls, still trying to make it all work even after the company has tanked, well, I admire the determination, but endings cannot be denied forever by sheer willpower.

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Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"

If I were building a search engine... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:22 · Score: 0

...I'd use Google's search results too. They're the best!

Re:Bing does not deny this != Copies Google's resu by osu-neko · 2011-02-01 07:24 · Score: 0

Thank you Microsoft apologist, but no, it's not trolltastic not misleading, it's a perfectly accurate statement. What your own experiment would prove, even if the results were positive, is not that Bing isn't copying Google's results, but merely that Bing isn't copying only Google's results. It does mean that they are copying Google's results, regardless of who else they may also be copying from.

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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

Seems like a load of . . . by wrencherd · 2011-02-01 07:25 · Score: 1

. . . hiybbprqag, if you ask me.

Re:Seems like a load of . . . by SiChemist · 2011-02-01 10:26 · Score: 1

Okay, I lol'd.

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God is imaginary

Re:Terrible. but very Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:30 · Score: 0

Which would follow their pattern very well. I really wish they would do more to improve technology and not just copy it. They have the technical talent but they always seem to let the business suits get in the way :(

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Frosty+Piss · 2011-02-01 07:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

If I said that to my teacher when caught cheating, I doubt it would have had much sway.

Bad analogy. This isn't a test.

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If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.

At Microsoft, this is business as usual... by hrrY · 2011-02-01 07:33 · Score: 1

I used to work for Microsoft Live search division, and they are referred to as "Google dumps". What I'm not sure about is if they(MS), or the advertiser, generates them as part of my job was to parse them(horrible work)... In any case it still comes down to the advertiser as they are the one's that pay for the keyword, phrase, etc.

Spoofing? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:39 · Score: 0

So how easy would it be to spoof the results of the bing toolbar and report some crazy connections?

google wants attention by chentiangemalc · 2011-02-01 07:40 · Score: 1

Doesn't look like bing's copying to me. only 7 of 100 tests demonstrated the "copied" search results, and even the copied results were "similar" not exactly the same. As for mis-spelling...MS has had autocorrection/spell checking technology for ages, before google knew about it, before the internet. Very in-conclusive proof if you ask me. Google's bigger concern is probably Bing is actually starting to get decent, and sometimes even better than google.

"Bing Is Not Google".. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 07:42 · Score: 0

...uh, on second thought, maybe we are.

Hmm... let's think about this for a second... by Just+Brew+It! · 2011-02-01 07:42 · Score: 1

So Microsoft is tuning their algorithms based on the search habits of people who are too stupid to not use Internet Explorer? This seems like a strategy that could backfire.

Actually, that's exactly what they are doing by localroger · 2011-02-01 07:43 · Score: 2

According to TFA Google created a bogus search term and a honeypot webpage that didn't even contain the bogus search term, and wrote one-time custom code to force their engine to return the fake webpage as top result. Very soon after running some Google searches for the bogus term through IE with the Bing toolbar where Google returned the fake result, Bing started returning the same fake result. The only way that could happen is if they were copying Google's results without even examining why Google was returning them.

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Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]

Re:Actually, that's exactly what they are doing by gmb61 · 2011-02-01 09:06 · Score: 1

Actually, it could happen if the users who received the honeypot page in their search results actually clicked on the honeypot page link. MS could just be monitoring the links that users click on and it has nothing to do with Google's search results.

Bing crashes by An0iD · 2011-02-01 07:43 · Score: 1

i use IE8 on windows vista and when i type anything in the bing search bar it crashes. I click restart the program and it goes to a 'fail page'. YAY GOOGLE WINS

Coincidence that Scott Prevost leaves Bing? by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · 2011-02-01 07:47 · Score: 1

Probably just be a coincidence, but I note that Scott Prevost, "Microsoft's principal development manager for its Bing search engine" has left for pastures new.

Re:Terrible. but very Microsoft by Alex+Belits · 2011-02-01 07:49 · Score: 1

Considering the retarded way how Microsoft "improves" things, I would be happier if it just copied them.

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Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.

Fuck off by justinlee37 · 2011-02-01 07:50 · Score: 1

Microsoft sucks and they do a lot of really under-handed, unethical shit but just because someone looks at Microsoft's behavior and doesn't ALWAYS conclude that they are evil, terrible and completely wrong in every instance does NOT make them a "fanboi."

I could just as easily say something like "geeez, FOSS fanbois will go to extremes to vilify anything and everything that Microsoft does," but I won't, because that would be extremely derogatory and probably an over-simplification of your opinions and viewpoints as a person. Basically, it would make me a huge self-righteous prick, kinda like you.

Re:Bing does not deny this != Copies Google's resu by arbarbonif · 2011-02-01 07:51 · Score: 2

But they aren't copying Google's results. They are spying on the user and finding out where they go. Your outrage is pointed the wrong way. If they searched for a junk phrase and clicked on a link on the 12th page, I suspect that would come up on Bing as the first result.

They are not spying on Google, they are spying on YOU!

Holy Google, Batman by thebian · 2011-02-01 07:53 · Score: 1

Who's that other guy in a cape and tights?

As if Google doesn't watch its competition and try to see if they can improve their results.

In a corporate, capitalist environment looking over the other guy's stuff is not covered by "Do no evil." I'm surprised Google is whining about this. They're still way better than Bing.

Turn it off by h4rdc0d3 · 2011-02-01 07:56 · Score: 1

Or you could just turn off the instant feature.

DRAINAGE!!! by twebb72 · 2011-02-01 08:05 · Score: 1

Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching?. And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake!

Google is simply experiencing some classic Daniel-Day Drainage!!

Simple Solution by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:05 · Score: 0

Footnote the Bing logo with "POWERED BY GOOGLE". I'll love to see that!!!

boogled by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:08 · Score: 0

Damn, looks like
boogled
is already a word and
boogle.com
is already taken.

Is there nothing new on the Internets?

Ecosia & Bing by roguegramma · 2011-02-01 08:14 · Score: 1

I tried to use Ecosia for some time, which is powered by Bing, but I have since given up because it doesn't return technical 1 in a million results, and I ususally try to fix really weird technical bugs that are not what "Joe" searches for by using the search engines. I guess their practice of optimizing for the most frequent google searches explains that feature.

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Hey don't blame me, IANAB

Is It Illegal? by AftanGustur · 2011-02-01 08:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

Suffice to say, Google’s pretty unhappy with the whole situation, which does raise a number of issues. For one, is what Bing seems to be doing illegal? Singhal was “hesitant” to say that since Google technically hasn’t lost anything. It still has its own results, even if it feels Bing is mimicking them.

The same can be said when I copy a DVD, RIAA hasn't lost anything, they still have their own copy!

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echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc

Re:Is It Illegal? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 10:27 · Score: 0

If Google is reticent to make any declarations then perhaps that say's alot about some of the tactics that google uses it self. I would think that if Google were lilly white on the matter they would be taking Bing to task.
Re:Is It Illegal? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 10:32 · Score: 0

The word (phrase) you are looking for is: Competitive Advantage
Re:Is It Illegal? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 10:38 · Score: 0

The difference being, Bing is doing it for commercial gain.
Re:Is It Illegal? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 11:55 · Score: 0

Bing it's just copying the results and keeping them private. They are copying the results and then making money off of them.
It's really like you burning a DVD to your computer and then making a torrent available to millions of people.
Re:Is It Illegal? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 14:49 · Score: 0

Facts aren't copyrightable. IANAL but I'm pretty sure this is solidly fair use.
Re:Is It Illegal? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 15:10 · Score: 0

The difference is that you aren't using those copies to compete with the RIAA for profit...
Re:Is It Illegal? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 20:29 · Score: 0

So you're saying people pirate DVDs and music not because they would rather not PAY MONEY for it but just for shits and giggles? Yeah, that makes it totally different from commercial gain.
Re:Is It Illegal? by dubsnipe · 2011-02-02 03:34 · Score: 1

It may not be illegal, but rather unethical. It's not like they're pirating the results, the content per se. They're using the layer underneath --the code--, and trying to pass it as their own to gain visitors/advertising revenue.
If you want a real life analogy, it's like the friend who asks for your advice or your help on something, but what he doesn't tell you is that he's going to sell the result and earn money with it. You're a doctor and don't have any idea of what the patient has? No problem, just go out on Friday night with your other doctor friends and tell them "I read about these symptoms..." so they tell you what they think and then you come back on Monday to charge your patient a lot of money for your brilliant diagnostics. Or even better: why don't we print some Google Maps screenshots and sell them to other people? Of course, we'd better not tell them where we got the images from.
If you make money from someone else's work, it's not OK, that's why I'm so much against sites such as Softonic. A good analogy on your example would be copying and burning CDs and selling them on the street. Tha'ts low life. If Bing wanted to test Google's search results to improve their own algorythm, there shouldn't be a problem; in fact, that's a healthy benchmark. However, if they're just displaying others' results, it's plain lame.

Let Me Google That For You by The+Living+Fractal · 2011-02-01 08:21 · Score: 1

So... now Bing is the *real* LMGTFY?

Let's see what happens...

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I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.

M$ always and forever... by hesaigo999ca · 2011-02-01 08:22 · Score: 1

This has always been the M$ way, wait for others to improve, then by them out, or copy them, and you will have
Profit!....

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by grcumb · 2011-02-01 08:26 · Score: 2

If I said that to my teacher when caught cheating, I doubt it would have had much sway.

Bad analogy. This isn't a test.

Yeah! Everybody knows there's no such thing as cheating in business.

Silly rabbit! Ethics is for kids!

--
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.

Looks OK to me... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:40 · Score: 0

Sorry, I don't see it and the example Google provides didn't return similar results to convince me of anything.

Microsoft isn't running the Google search engine from their Bing server. The claim is that Bing is determine the search relevancy -- that's a good thing. Both Google and Bing have a smaller set of users than Google and Bing together, so the best search results will be based on searches performed through the combination of the two search engines. Looks like Microsoft is right on this one and Google is burned because they didn't think of it.

Bing's search volume can't be very high by t2t10 · 2011-02-01 08:51 · Score: 1

If they can copy Google's search results without Google even noticing unusual traffic, then Bing's search volume has to be rather low.

Re:Bing's search volume can't be very high by Mr+Z · 2011-02-01 18:17 · Score: 1

Bing isn't contacting Google's servers. The Bing toolbar is watching IE users use Google and sending the information back to Microsoft.

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Program Intellivision!

M$ doesnt innovate - they emulate. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:53 · Score: 0

This has always been the key to their success. Why is anyone suprprised?

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by lennier · 2011-02-01 09:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

Yeah! Everybody knows there's no such thing as cheating in business.

Silly rabbit! Ethics is for kids!

Of course there's ethics, and the ethical thing to do is to improve your offering to give the customers what they want. And since the search market is all aggregating third-party data to start with, I don't see why it should be 'wrong' to aggregate another aggregator's data. Don't we want an open Internet? How does calling meta-search 'cheating' make any more sense than calling pinging someone elses router 'theft'? Heck, in the before-time, there used to be entire search engines whose business model was *just* meta-search - anyone remember Dogpile?

Now, depending on your competitor to give you honest responses to your mechanical queries, that might be a weakness...

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You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:19 · Score: 0

Well, if Google looses money from advertising because Bling is "cheating" on them I'd say it ain't a bad analogy. I'm sure some "good" lawyer will make a profit out of this :P

Cheers!

Re:Terrible. but very Microsoft by lennier · 2011-02-01 09:21 · Score: 1

To give Microsoft their due, Encarta was a pretty good product when it was launched, in the CD-ROM era. I never saw Comptons, Britannica took forever to go digital and was really expensive, and Wikipedia came along much later.

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You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC

Microsoft's new patent by freelunch · 2011-02-01 09:21 · Score: 1

Balmer's next innovation will be to patent copying search results. Then they'll sue Google for infringing on Microsoft's copy. Profit!

This is wonderful!! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:23 · Score: 0

Does this mean (with a bit of trickery) we can make IE think we are searching for something unrelated on google, and found the goatse link - and microsoft will put it in Bing for us as a suggestion?

Please hold, I have some trolling to do.

Re:Terrible. but very Microsoft by Creepy · 2011-02-01 09:24 · Score: 1

wow - all that and no mention of MS-DOS and MS-Windows - true that MS-DOS was purchased and was a sloppy CP/M clone, but you have to admire the redirecting of the lawsuits to the creator and running them into the ground while profiting all the way.

As for Windows, it was a copy of MacOS, which itself was a copy of Xerox, and like many copies of copies, a lot was lost in translation, especially in early versions, and much of that wasn't fixed until well after Windows 3.11 (3.11 was the first "acceptable" version of Windows, IMO, and 95 was the first usable version - then there was that giant mis-step called Windows ME...).

rename Bing to Big by cyrilc · 2011-02-01 09:28 · Score: 1

Since Bing was originally a pun that meant "Bing Is Not Google", maybe they should now rename it to Big (Big Is Google) ...or in proper english: Google is BIG!

Google dominates the search market, so... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:43 · Score: 0

Google dominates the search market. That means web site developers optimize their web sites to what they think works well with google, and users optimize their queries to what they thinks works well with google. Accounting for what works well with Google is thus sort of necessary to get your foot into the door with the search market. In much the same way that you might have to reverse engineer how proprietary windows protocols work in order to offer services that people can use in place of Microsoft offerings, to a point where Microsoft is forced in some places like the European Union to publish their protocols. The desire to make your server software work well in a Microsoft-dominated network of some enterprise, and the desire to make your search service work well in a Google-dominated world wide web, are not all that different.

If Wine developers figured out how some hypothetical Windows Help feature does search, and made their re-implementation do the same thing, so users get the same experience whether they use Genuine Windows or Wine, that would not exactly be frowned upon, and this situation is not very different from that. Genuine Windows Help search may in fact suck, but if everything is optimized for the sucky Genuine Windows Help, doing something more clever may not work very well for users. So, there is not much wrong with this as far as I can see. If the two were on something resembling equal footing, this might be anti-competative, but they are not by a long shot.

Of course this is cheating by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 09:48 · Score: 0

Of course this is cheating. It's no different than encyclopedias using 'seed' entries to root out copiers. Throw in a few obscure little entries (that don't actually exist) Most copiers will simply assume it does exist and they just didn't know. If seed entries appear in another encyclopedia, boom ... proof they simply copied your info rather than doing their own research. Encyclopedia companies have successfully sued for that.

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Kittenman · 2011-02-01 09:50 · Score: 1

Another reason it's a bad analogy: it doesn't involve a car. (This is Slashdot, after all)

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"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by MoonBuggy · 2011-02-01 09:59 · Score: 1

/thread

Same Rationale as a Test by Roger+W+Moore · 2011-02-01 10:11 · Score: 1

Bad analogy. This isn't a test.

When you pass off someone else's work as your own (whether it be a test exam or assignment) that is cheating because you are claiming to have done the work yourself and hence to know something when, in fact you do not. Isn't this EXACTLY what Bing is doing? Claiming it has done all this search work itself when in fact some fraction of the work has been done by Google? Not cheating would be to tell people in advance that they use Google search results...but if they did that I imagine a lot of people would just use Google directly. Hence they are breaking the ethical rules of conduct to gain an advantage which is the exact definition of cheating.

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by magus_melchior · 2011-02-01 10:20 · Score: 1

Is it a bad analogy? One could argue that the test of any search engine in the marketplace is whether its results are accurate, and whether it delivers the desired information to the user (and perhaps sponsored information for advertisers).

If that is the test of a search engine's success or failure, I'd say that the analogy holds. Moreover, the entire purpose of enforcing no-cheating policies in school tests is to help ensure that we don't cheat in real life.

Now, no one, save for perhaps the FTC, can "expel" Microsoft for doing this the way a school administrator can expel someone for cheating on a test. If that's the contrast you were looking for, that's a rather pedantic rebuttal.

--
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by iserlohn · 2011-02-01 10:53 · Score: 1

I guess you didn't RTFA? What Microsoft did was to basically indirectly copy Google's search results, by "taking notes" on which terms the user searched for (on Google search), and which link he clicked on from the result subsequently.

There are also such things as database rights (at least in the EU), which Microsoft will likely be infringing. They are in effect, infringing on Google's ordering of web URLs for a particular search term. There is case law precedent and I suspect you will see an escalation in this matter shortly.

--
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Flipao · 2011-02-01 11:04 · Score: 1

Of course there's ethics, and the ethical thing to do is to improve your offering to give the customers what they want. .

That makes no sense, the act of improving your offering has nothing to do with ethics. What is relevant is "how" you improve it, stealing copyrighted works from a superior competitor is, regardless of how you try and spin it, both illegal and immoral.

As far as openness goes, it is both open and simple enough, If they want to be "Bing: Powered by Google" then they'll need to put a Google search box in their site.

OOoohh yeess, im the greaat pree teenndeeerr !!! by unity100 · 2011-02-01 11:12 · Score: 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-EGT3yY41E&feature=related

My need is suchhhh, i preteendd too mucchhh, to be a search engineeeee.

--
Read radical news here

If I were Google by initialE · 2011-02-01 11:32 · Score: 1

I dunno, maybe exposing the cheat was not the best of ideas. Instead, manipulation of the enemy sounds like a better idea - now that you know their game, start changing the rules around them. I'm reminded of John Grisham's "The Rainmaker" - the protagonist found that his opponents were bugging his office, so he set them up to take a nasty fall.

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Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.

Re:If I were Google by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 17:02 · Score: 0

I dunno, maybe exposing the cheat was not the best of ideas. Instead, manipulation of the enemy sounds like a better idea - now that you know their game, start changing the rules around them. I'm reminded of John Grisham's "The Rainmaker" - the protagonist found that his opponents were bugging his office, so he set them up to take a nasty fall.
It's probably that whole not being evil thing. I mean, yeah, if Google could get Bing to display pictures of chair-throwing monkeys whenever you searched for Ballmer or Microsoft, it'd be pretty funny. But questionable ethically. Disclaimer: I work for google but alas had nothing to do with this.

WOAH! by IHC+Navistar · 2011-02-01 11:33 · Score: 1

I smell a lawsuit brewing, and when I saw 'lawsuit', I mean a Battle Royale that will make the SCO vs. IBM/Novell/Red Hat/AutoZone/DaimlerChrysler and Microsoft Antitrust Lawsuits look like minor trash talk during a game of Chutes And Ladders.

With the justification that Microsoft is using, they are effectively charging head first into battle with a rubber chicken.

Additionally, this could cause trouble for Microsoft, as the software that gathers their data for them could technically be labeled as spyware. Given the fact that Bing is pretty new in the search engine arena, this could significantly stunt its growth, or kill it altogether.

This is an extremely bad admission for Microsoft.

If a student were to use Microsoft's argument to dodge failing a test when they were caught copying answers from another student, the professor would probably laugh them out of school. I think that it is pretty fair to say that a judge would do the same thing.

All told, this is definitely unlawful on three fronts:

1. Infringement of copyright,
2. Unlawful interception of electronic information,

The second claim is kind of flimsy, and hinges on the EULA if there is one, but this could hurt if there is nothing authorizing data collection.

--
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by ThePromenader · 2011-02-01 11:35 · Score: 1

Yes, it's worse than that. Imagine two students having an assignment: one goes out and does all the research necessary, and after all his data mining, works to make his paper as relevant and clear as possible; the other perhaps does some (of the needed) research and mining himself, but waits for the first student to return so he can steal the best key phrases from him.

Worse still, the second student obviously doesn't even consider himself up to the task of providing a passing paper, because his idea from the get-go was to copy the first student's work.

--

No, no sig. Really.

ThePromenader

Doesn't this... by Coppit · 2011-02-01 11:54 · Score: 1

Doesn't this absolutely totally violate the google terms of service?

In that case... by localroger · 2011-02-01 11:55 · Score: 1

How would Bing know to associate the honeypot page with the bogus search term that had been sent to Google? Somehow Bing had to get both the bogus search term and the honeypot page URL. Even supposing the browser gave them a "search agnostic" request saying what the search term was, before including it in their own search results Bing should have at least looked at the page and observed that it was not in fact relevant. Instead, they trusted some other search engine enough to include results that were in fact irrelevant. It's really hard to believe that happened without them deliberately cribbing from what they thought was a better algorithm.

--
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]

What no one pays attention to is by melted · 2011-02-01 12:32 · Score: 1

What no one pays attention to (and what's far, far more important) is that Microsoft also uses Facebook's web tracking data for behavioral ads targeting. All those "Like" buttons? Tracking! Each and every one reports your site visits back to Facebook, whether you click it or not, by virtue of merely showing up on the page. And Facebook has fairly low noise profile data on hundreds of millions of its customers spanning the globe. Nielsen just smokes nervously in the corner with its tiny panel of users, which everyone mines for co-visitation data when doing behavioral targeting.

What does all of this mean? It means Facebook (and by extension Microsoft) knows what sites you (and other people like you) go to, and they can determine age, gender, interests, etc even for the users on whom Facebook has no data, with fairly decent precision. In other words, whether you have a Facebook account or not, the Big Zuckerberg is watching.

As far as this "copying" - it's BS on Google's part plain and simple. They just added one more signal to their neural net, and it's ranking long tail terms similarly to Google because they don't have human data on them. That's hardly "stealing".

Re:Cheating? Maybe theft?? by Will.Woodhull · 2011-02-01 12:40 · Score: 2

Whether it violates Google's TOS (is there one?) is not as interesting a question as whether Bing's behavior constitutes a theft of services. On the face of it, this looks like a criminal activity.

--
Will

Re:For all those who say this is cheating... by geekmux · 2011-02-01 13:10 · Score: 1

this is NOT cheating, plain and simple, for one reason.

Search Engines are not a proctored test.

Really? Throw away a few billion in lost revenue from either company involved, and "proctoring" has nothing to do with it. Lawyers will see it for what it is; theft for profit.

Let's not forget what makes companies like Google a company and not a charity. No one would give a shit if money wasn't involved.

Evil by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 13:57 · Score: 0

Microsoft is clearly evil

situation reversed, micro$oft wouldn't hesitate in suing.

BING: Bing Is Now Google by foxylad · 2011-02-01 14:23 · Score: 1

...

--
Do as you would be done to.

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 14:24 · Score: 0

Just because this isn't a test doesn't mean that it is not cheating.

More Google FUD by alcmaeon · 2011-02-01 15:32 · Score: 1

From TFA "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."

Two things to note: 1) this statement says that Bing is using the user searches and user selections to improve its own search results, not the Google search returns; 2) the article doesn't exclude the (probably very great) likelihood that Bing also tracks user selections from searches executed on Bing to improve its own results.

Nothing to see here (other than Google's fear of losing search share), so move along.

The cats out of the bag by HermMunster · 2011-02-01 15:42 · Score: 1

Remember when Vista came out? There were a few articles showing all the toolbars in an infected IE. It was funny to see how many there were, but few people actually asked themselves about why *any* toolbar exists.

It seems every company want's you to install their toolbar and/or to switch to their search engine. Why? Many masquerade that they are providing alternative search engines in such a way as to not force you to change your search engine. If it's the reason, this is a big a fib. We know it's a fib because we know most browsers have options allowing you to change the search engine temporarily. Getting you to install a toolbar is a way of getting you to allow (without actually consenting) to allow the toolbar developer to sneak a peak at what you are doing. You didn't think that toolbar was there for you to click on the pretty buttons did you? They're there to track what you do (and to present ads targeted at what you are looking at).

It was bad enough having Microsoft leach this way, but now there is the impetuous to encourage more developers to create toolbars so they can copy Microsoft's parasitic approach. Now that the cat's out of the bag and the methodology is known, you will have everyone doing it. Even those malicious search products that sneak onto your computer disguised as a legitimate product will be able to do this and they'll be able to make money.

I guess the best way to deal with this is to not use Microsoft's Bing, or their Live products, or IE. One has to ask, that as their products get used less, how they keep this up. I guess I'm not surprised to find myself concluding that they'd just add this to their other products -- anything that would run continuously (even their desktop search could monitor (Search 4.0)).

When I thought about how they did it and when I concluded that they were cheating and not going through the pain in order to gain (so to speak) I couldn't help thinking that sort of plays out the Chaos theory described in the Jurassic Park movie. In other words, Microsoft won't have taken the time to learn how to do it themselves so they copy the big guys, the competent ones, but in the end they'll fuck everyone over.

And on another point, as far as I am concerned there is no opting in here. No one here knew what Microsoft was doing. Some may have suspected it, yet held their tongue as the mass insane would accuse them of conspiracy theories, but, the fact remains, no one knew for certain until now. With this being the case, how on freaking earth could those people opt in? Has that passed by so many of those people by?

Just ask yourself this: how does Google put an end to it? How can they control this in a way that stops Microsoft (or anyone else) from doing precisely this. Microsoft's parasitic approach to search is telling, in that they are admitting that they do not have the skill to create a product that can compete head to head with Google. They are sucking the blood of Google in order to feed their own system, because they "suck".

--
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.

Perhaps not cheating... by LongearedBat · 2011-02-01 16:13 · Score: 1

Well... are Google pages copyrighted?

Google search is a service that you may use, but is the content it generates copyrighted? After all, Googles knowledge of the web comes from Googles reasearch and resides on Googles databases, and so is owned by Google.

If Google has copyrighted that information, then Micrsoft would be up for copyright infringement by trying to copy that information. Although that's not strictly speaking cheating, I think Micrsoft would cry foul in a big way if Google did the same to Bing.

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Meski · 2011-02-01 16:14 · Score: 1

Nah, Google will probably start serving trash to Bing. Then Microsoft will sue Google.

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by transiit · 2011-02-01 16:27 · Score: 1

Did you just try to call corporate espionage ethical in the name of "improve your offering to give the customers what they want"?

They spend gigabucks and several chairs through wi by plasmasurfer · 2011-02-01 17:58 · Score: 1

MS has a 27-story tower in the middle of tony Bellevue, WA stuffed with Bing programmers, and all they can come up with is this? Excuse me, but this is the zenith of lame, and Die Gotterdamerung for Ballmer and minions. MS should stick to what they do best: games and t-shirts. I still have a black polo one with the BackOrifice logo and it's my favorite one because it's sturdy and comfortable.

--
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.

Google is smart by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 18:24 · Score: 0

They'll find a way to feed bing bogus search results until all you can get from it are v!agr@ sites

five minute sniff test by epine · 2011-02-01 19:04 · Score: 1

My point is that this 'experiment' doesn't prove a thing, and to point the finger on this kind of evidence is extremely childish.

I disagree, but it took me a moment to figure out that you actually had a point to disagree with.

What's apparent here is that Microsoft is siphoning popularity data on a wide scale on the back of fine print that hardly anyone reads, is rarely understood, and most people would resent, if it was worth the bother.

Rational ignorance

In this case, the popularity for these nonsense lexemes was entirely driven by Google creating a nonsense search result. I guess you're essentially saying that Google's power to drive popularity is so great it amounts to a public good. Legally, I'm not even sure how to frame the converse.

I have a slightly different stupidity scale than most people. Mine runs like this:

treasury official who trusts Goldman Sachs > SEC official who trusts Bernie Madoff > pets.com > average consumer > blowhard politician > almost any telecom > 90% of everything > other successful enterprises > most middling government minus the politics > private sector success story > open source success story > Archimedes

There are more PHBs in the enterprise space than in government. I've known many middle managers in government (Canada) and not one of them is like the PHB in Dilbert. The only one who comes close I heard about second hand. He gave a public speech to a bunch of technologists circa 1996 extolling the imminent victory of token ring over TCP/IP. Eyeballs nearly rolled out their sockets. Stupid supreme, on a tail wind supplied by private sector whiteshirts with infinite lunch money.

Microsoft owns the PHB space. Every PHB has their five minute moment where they must appear to demonstrate autonomy/competence by gathering a data point of evidence on a requirements checklist item. Bing is default search in provincial government here (government does not specialize in fighting battles it can't win, and you've got bigger fish to fry when the Oracle guy shows up). At some point some middle manager pulled up to a keyboard and typed five obscure search phrases into Google then Bing and then declared "see, it's not that much different!" Case closed.

That's all Microsoft usually cares about, what a dull or discouraged plastic knife can discern in a 5 minute sniff test.

Google arguing directly that it owns popularity data accruing to its search algorithms would put an interesting spin on "don't be evil". Popularity by its nature is hard to corral.

Normal by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 19:20 · Score: 0

Anybody who thinks Google didn't grow from researching how other search engines work, that car manufacturers don't pay attention to how other car manufacturers build, that artists don't learn from other people's teachings, that phone companies don't out-right-steal from one another... are dumb as hell. It's shady, but it's business. It's like that old saying "if you can't beat em, join em" - except in this case, it's acceptable form to have "if you can't beat em, copy em". Someone up top said it best, "it's not a test", while the next person pointed out the potential danger in this - if some day we forsake Google in favor of Bing, will Bing regress? Or.. Will Bing continue to grow features that are entirely innovative? This is where, while it's not a "test" - the potential damage we can do to ourselves is pretty high here. The bottom line is that windows is so popular that it can force users to 'start out' using whatever search engine it wants - and as long as that search engine isn't terrible it will get a decent share of the search engine market. Until Google develops an operating system superior (in appeal, not technical features) to Windows latest and greatest, it will have to find a way to make up for that direct competition with defaulting to Google.com in Android on smartphones and tablets. It's only a matter of time before Apple enters this game as well, since advertising revenue is easy money for any major search engine and apple has two great ways to force that advertising onto people (iphone and safari).

Google NEVER scans other search engines? by EricTheO · 2011-02-01 19:47 · Score: 0

I doubt that Google never scans other search or indexing sites to see what is popular or relevant. It would be foolish not to do so. This may not be the core of their methedology, but to skip all search and indexing sites?

--
-Eric

seems like privacy violation in spades. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 20:34 · Score: 0

This seems like privacy violation in spades to me.
By introducing the code that captures your interaction with
another party and recording it as if you were invited seems
wrong.

there was a /. where an iPhone in record mode could
get you in serious trouble in some states. This is
recording and diverting the conversation. Since the
search result changes and persists they are 'retaining the data'.

Google's Strategy Against Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 20:59 · Score: 0

Google is being nice by shaming Microsoft to voluntarily stop. Otherwise, when push comes to shove, the way to stop this copying is to get a lot of automated machines to install the Bing Toolbar and feed Microsoft a lot of BAD search data. Then the point will become moot since this search property can no longer be trusted. I'm sure Google wouldn't mind receiving the same treatment because they are do a lot of battle with spammers, and they don't seem to weight the toolbar search info as high as Microsoft does.

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by geggo98 · 2011-02-01 21:02 · Score: 1

If I said that to my teacher when caught cheating, I doubt it would have had much sway.

Bad analogy. This isn't a test.

From a more philosophic point of view it actually is a test. The task is: "Build a machine that answers my questions." The people are evaluating the results given by Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, etc. The one giving the best reults is getting the points in form of klicks, eyeballs and ultimately money. The other ones have to improve their results in that steadily running test. In a capitalistic system this drives innovation.

Copying the reults of others cheats the system and harms innovation. And more directly: It removes points from the other praticipants of that test by catching klicks, eyeballs and ultimately taking some of the money that the real winner would deserve.

So the one copying the results is cheating us by decrease the rate of innovation and he is cheating his competitors by getting some of the money they deserve.

So in my opinion the analogy by the GP post was quite correct. It is a perpetual test (just like evolution).

Misleading summary by williamhb · 2011-02-01 21:18 · Score: 1

It's like a student cheating on his homework by copying the smart kid. It will only work as long as the smart kid sticks around.

Except, it's more like taking a statistical survey across all the schools in the state, and then Willy Watkins from class 7B in Bloggsville School says "some of my data is in your survey -- therefore you're copying my results! He then carefully finds a tiny number of searches where there are very few data points other than his, so his data is prominent. But there aren't enough of those so he invents some fake data -- words like "hiybbprqag" -- creates some links for them in a bogus results page, and pays people to install Bing's toolbar and click on the links so the data of them clicking on that link with a referrer URL including the search term "hiybbprqag" will be sent to Bing. He then complains bitterly that Bing, which has just seen a gazillion reported web requests for that URL and with a referrer URL including "search...q=hiybbprqag", thinks that gee maybe that URL might have something to do with "hiybbprqag". He contacts the media and gives them the headline "Bing copies Willy Watkins!"

Bing treats toolbar-reported clicks-on-links as evidence of relevance, just as every search engine including Google's treats page links themselves as evidence of relevance. With Google being the second most visited site on the planet, of course some of the click data is likely to have ended up being from search results pages. Just as some of Google's link data will have come from Microsoft properties like msn.com. And some will come from Slashdot, and maybe even a tiny trillionth of a percentage will come from my blog. And perhaps if I make up a word, say "znapgipslacaragilgar", and put a link with that in the title on my blog, my blog link will eventually turn up in Google's search results for that term. Would that mean Google shut put a "powered by Will's insignificant blog" button on their homepage, or I that I should get headlines saying they copied me? The proportions may end up being different, but the situation is the same: in search everybody is copying everybody's data. While Google may own their search results page, they do not own the user's click on a link. And it appears to be that -- the user's click on a link -- not the search results page that Bing is using.

Re:Misleading summary by BasilBrush · 2011-02-03 02:16 · Score: 1

Bing treats toolbar-reported clicks-on-links as evidence of relevance, just as every search engine including Google's treats page links themselves as evidence of relevance.
Are you trolling? Google (probably) treats clicks on Google's own search results page as evidence. Microsoft treats clicks on their competitor's search results page (via IE toolbar spying) as evidence. And you're suggesting that's the same?
Re:Misleading summary by williamhb · 2011-02-03 16:55 · Score: 1

Are you trolling? Google (probably) treats clicks on Google's own search results page as evidence. Microsoft treats clicks on their competitor's search results page (via IE toolbar spying) as evidence. And you're suggesting that's the same?
Bing treats clicks on any links anywhere as evidence, just as Google's crawler treats links on any page anywhere as evidence. The whole "on their competitor's search results page" is a furphy, and is much the same as how Google's crawler has treated links on their competitor (Yahoo)'s directory as evidence for years -- sounds shocking until you add the "...amongst millions of other sources of evidence". You could actually run an almost identical sting on Google. If you snuck a link to a page for "znahanadakas" onto Yahoo's directory, then yup the Yahoo-pointed site would soon be the top link on Google Search. Should we run a "Google copies Yahoo" headline then? That is almost precisely the equivalent of what Google did to Bing here.
Re:Misleading summary by BasilBrush · 2011-02-04 00:26 · Score: 1

Bing treats clicks on any links anywhere as evidence
That's not the issue. The issue is collecting the search term which is intended to go to Google, and associating it with the next URL that is clicked on. That's NOT an "anywhere on the web" technology. That's a technology specifically targeted at stealing the best results from competitors search engines.
If Microsoft didn't take the search term, and only collected clicks on URLs (as you describe) there wouldn't be a problem. But that is not the case.

much the same as how Google's crawler has treated links on their competitor (Yahoo)'s directory as evidence for years
Except as far as we know they ARE only collecting click-streams, so they are not stealing other search engines associations between search terms and results that Microsoft are.

If you snuck a link to a page for "znahanadakas" onto Yahoo's directory, then yup the Yahoo-pointed site would soon be the top link on Google Search.

The page would be found by spidering, or by click streams. But it Google would not associate Yahoo's search terms with that page, because as far as we know, Google isn't collecting that data. Bing is.
We have evidence that Bing is stealing Googles search results. There is no such evidence of Google doing the same thing. And to be sure, they are not doing the same thing. They aren't dumb enough to kick up a stink about Microsoft stealing from them if they were secretly stealing from Microsoft in the same way.
Re:Misleading summary by williamhb · 2011-02-04 03:57 · Score: 1

That's not the issue. The issue is collecting the search term which is intended to go to Google, and associating it with the next URL that is clicked on. That's NOT an "anywhere on the web" technology.
O yes it is. In fact most sites you visit do that analysis these days. The Referer HTTP header (which contains the source URL and includes the search query) does not only go to Google. It also, for instance, sent by your browser to the site that you visit. Most of which do use analytics to see what search queries are leading you to their site. Every site you visit from every search results page has access to the search query URL that took you there (not thanks to Google but thanks to your browser and the HTTP standard). So yes the Referrer URL is most certainly a standard part of link-click information.

The page would be found by spidering, or by click streams. But it Google would not associate Yahoo's search terms with that page, because as far as we know, Google isn't collecting that data. Bing is.
That is a furphy. Firstly, Bing is collecting is not Google's search terms. Google does not own the queries that I type. The search query is not written by Google but by the human user and belongs to the human user. That, for instance, is why 'torsorophy' (the human user's misspelling) ended up in Bing, not 'tarrsorrhaphy' (which was Google's term that they spelling-corrected it to). Bing does not care that "Google showed site X for query Y". It cares "Human user actively chose to click link X". It is the user's decision that is mined, not Google's. And that user's decision would be mined whether the link they were clicking on was on Google or anywhere else.
Secondly, I'm interested in why you think spidering, where a spider comes and pilfers your content unless you actively opt out, is somehow more noble than collecting click data from volunteers who have to actively opt in to sending you their data? Google comes by unannounced to suck your data and that is "noble" (even if it's flogging the fact you've got a WiFi router to marketing companies -- that's what the StreetView drive-bys were trying to collect, but that's another story). But if you actively agree to send some of your data to Microsoft that's just "stealing".
Thirdly, Google do have a lot of your click-stream data -- and without your permission. Google Analytics is neatly embedded on many pages, making sure that even if you didn't go there via Google search, Google still gets told where you went and where you came from. In fact, Google probably gets orders of magnitude more referrer->visited-site information through this than ever Bing gets from the toolbar. And Google's Analytics FAQ says "shared data will be used to improve the services we provide you" -- gee, I wonder if that means they use it in their tuning of the search service they provide me...
Fourthly, I'd have thought by now you'd have realised that actually this whole controversy is a ridiculous misdirection. Not many searchers are about 'torsorophy' -- for most queries the click-stream data has a miniscule impact. But Google and Microsoft do both have very active teams carefully analysing the oppositions' algorithms by constructing queries and data so that they can copy anything they find.
Re:Misleading summary by BasilBrush · 2011-02-06 06:06 · Score: 1

I asked earlier if you were trolling. This message confirms it. Every single point you make is tiresome FUD. None of them actually addressing what Microsoft is actually doing here.

this whole controversy is a ridiculous misdirection
No. Just but that is a very valid way of describing your posts.
Re:Misleading summary by williamhb · 2011-02-06 12:33 · Score: 1

I asked earlier if you were trolling. This message confirms it. Every single point you make is tiresome FUD... No. Just but that is a very valid way of describing your posts.
Ah, the "I can't rebut any of your points, so I'm just going to snip everything and make pathetic insults to pretend I'm right" tactic. Not very impressive. But hey, you're so tied up in the groupthink that what does it matter to you that your claims do not match reality. Keep waving your banner and shouting "Ra ra ra" rather than thinking and analysing facts if you like.
Re:Misleading summary by BasilBrush · 2011-02-06 14:33 · Score: 1

No, it's not worth it to me to spend my time following your random distractions outcome. You know you're spinning FUD, I know you're spinning FUD. So why would I waste time on it? You're not going to suddenly change from being dishonest to being honest.
Re:Misleading summary by williamhb · 2011-02-06 15:11 · Score: 1

No, it's not worth it to me to spend my time following your random distractions outcome. You know you're spinning FUD, I know you're spinning FUD. So why would I waste time on it? You're not going to suddenly change from being dishonest to being honest.
I don't think you even know what FUD means. Let me spell it out to you: detailed analysis of what Bing actually analyses is not FUD. It's not fear, and there is no doubt or uncertainty about my analysis. Posting claims that obtaining the referrer URL is "NOT an anywhere on the Web technology" when actually the Referrer URL is part of the HTTP standard, that's FUD. And then when you are caught out as being wrong, levying random accusations against your opponents honesty (this post) and unsubstantiated accusations of "you're trolling" and "you're spinning FUD" (previous posts), that is FUD -- grandstanding to the (imagined) audience and trying to sow doubt about your opponent's honesty because you cannot address the arguments. But I see you are a proud man who reacts badly when he is found to be wrong, so I will end the conversation here.
Re:Misleading summary by BasilBrush · 2011-02-07 00:28 · Score: 1

detailed analysis of what Bing actually analyses is not FUD.
No it wouldn't be. But that's exactly what you never did. What you did instead was try to claim that a bunch of very different things done by Google were the same. At very tiresome length.
Why you're dishonestly shilling for Microsoft, isn't clear. But it's not worth anyone's time doing a point by point rebuttal against such misdirections.
Re:Misleading summary by BasilBrush · 2011-02-07 00:43 · Score: 1

Posting claims that obtaining the referrer URL is "NOT an anywhere on the Web technology" when actually the Referrer URL is part of the HTTP standard, that's FUD.
I never wrote about the "Referrer URL" at all. Not commented on your use of it. It's a distraction.
Perhaps we have hint as to why you are so way out there. You're confused in thinking that what Bing is doing is using the Referrer field of a HTTP request. You're wrong. The data is sent to Bing by the search bar of IE. It's nothing to do with the Referrer field. The referrer field only delivers information to the domain of the clicked on URL. It doesn't provide the kind of evesdropping activity that Bing are doing.
Re:Misleading summary by williamhb · 2011-02-07 03:45 · Score: 1

I never wrote about the "Referrer URL" at all. Not commented on your use of it. It's a distraction.... The data is sent to Bing by the search bar of IE. It's nothing to do with the Referrer field. The referrer field only delivers information to the domain of the clicked on URL.
Will you wake up, man?? My very first post told you quite precisely that Bing's toolbar is sending them details of the GET request including the referrer URL (post 1, paragraph 1, sentence 2). That is what they are doing and it is all they are doing. That is what this entire discussion has been about. And it has been public knowledge in Microsoft's privacy policy for years:

"...will also be sent to Microsoft such as the time that websites were visited, which website referred you, and how you got there (e.g., by clicking a link or one of your Favorites)"
But I'll let you get back to thinking up some more random slanders. We've had "trolling", "shilling", "FUD", ... I can't wait to hear what rubbish you spin next because you have been shown to be wrong.
Re:Misleading summary by BasilBrush · 2011-02-07 09:42 · Score: 1

My very first post told you quite precisely that Bing's toolbar is sending them details of the GET request including the referrer URL (post 1, paragraph 1, sentence 2).
Hard to know which particular post you mean. This seems the closest: "The Referer HTTP header (which contains the source URL and includes the search query) does not only go to Google."
Which says nothing about Bing's toolbar. More nonsense and distraction from you.

But I'll let you get back to thinking up some more random slanders. We've had "trolling", "shilling", "FUD", ... I can't wait to hear what rubbish you spin next because you have been shown to be wrong.
It's because it's hard to believe how far you are wrong that you earn these descriptions. I think you've now achieved "stupid cunt".
Re:Misleading summary by williamhb · 2011-02-07 14:21 · Score: 1

Hard to know which particular post you mean.

I didn't realise you struggle with counting.
"...pays people to install Bing's toolbar and click on the links so the data of them clicking on that link with a referrer URL including the search term "hiybbprqag" will be sent to Bing."

I think you've now achieved "stupid cunt".
And it's off to the admin abuse-reporting link for you.
Re:Misleading summary by BasilBrush · 2011-02-07 23:02 · Score: 1

My very first post told you quite precisely that Bing's toolbar is sending them details of the GET request including the referrer URL (post 1, paragraph 1, sentence 2).
Hard to know which particular post you mean.
I didn't realise you struggle with counting.
"...pays people to install Bing's toolbar and click on the links so the data of them clicking on that link with a referrer URL including the search term "hiybbprqag" will be sent to Bing."
That's from sentence 3. You shot yourself in the foot again.

And it's off to the admin abuse-reporting link for you.
Cry baby.

Getting Around robots.txt by Nishi-no-wan · 2011-02-01 21:53 · Score: 1

I disallowed MSN bot via robots.txt many years ago. Shortly after Bing started up, I started getting hits coming from Bing. I checked their forums to see how to disable Bing from crawling my site, the instructions hadn't changed - disallow MSN bot. Each time MSN bot came along, it got robots.txt, then apparently went away (that IP address didn't repeat).

Since I couldn't stop Microsoft from linking to my site, I got my revenge a different way. I wrote a filter to check the referrer; if it came from Bing, I redirected to Google with the same search parameters. Most come back from Google a minute or two later (after their confusion wears off?).

I don't care so much about the legality of what Microsoft is doing. It's just plain wrong in my book, and I'll happily lose potential hits to my site to see to it that they do not benefit from this underhanded behavior.

Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 22:44 · Score: 0

Try copying a Microsoft Operating system and see how cozy they get if they cotton on to you

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 23:44 · Score: 0

If the free market isn't a test to a business, then i don't know what is.

Antitrust violation? by fgouget · 2011-02-02 00:47 · Score: 1

So Bing is leveraging Internet Explorer's dominant position to improve its search results. Since they both belong to Microsoft this sounds like an antitrust violation. Even more so since Internet Explorer is bundled with another product which has been ruled to hold a monopoly position on desktop operating systems. That is unless they offer to share the data collected by Internet Explorer with other companies under the same terms as they do for Bing...

Name change in order? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 01:47 · Score: 0

They need to change their name to "Bingle".

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 02:28 · Score: 0

Wrong. Good analogy.

Cheating = taking credit for intellectual property that isn't your own. What Bing is doing is taking credit for what another search engine has done. It wouldn't be a problem if they had a clause on their page saying something like: "Streamlined by Google." or "Improved by Google."

Google copies too by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 04:09 · Score: 0

How do you think Google builds Google News? G does it by copying web pages from news sites. News sites can't block google because google has a monopoly on search.
So it is ok for google to copy somebody else but nobody can copy google? Why do they think they are special?

Re:Bing does not deny this != Copies Google's resu by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 04:21 · Score: 0

There is no "most likely" about it, IE and the bing toolbar report every url visited.
This means microsoft get the google.com/search?q=searchterm url, and then the next page they visit after that page.

You can use a packet sniffer to verify this yourself.

microsoft then enter the visited page into their bing database, and add the search term as a keyword. This is how microsoft pair the search term with the desired result.

it is illegal. by unity100 · 2011-02-02 04:59 · Score: 1

basically you are directly monitoring and copying another service, to provide the same service.

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Read radical news here

They do it through internet explorer then. by unity100 · 2011-02-02 05:03 · Score: 1

another reason not to use that * now * spyware. apparently, it is no problem for microsoft if their shady dealings cause the users of the spyware they give away to them to violate another company's tos.

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Read radical news here

wooooooooowww by unity100 · 2011-02-02 05:04 · Score: 1

"learning". yeah, now it sounds all proper .... now, if only we define as such, copying can become learning too. just like you did. then there wont be any issues of copyright.

'they are doing this with all search engines' is even a more stupid defense of the illegality that is taking place here.

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wow 'improving' a product. by unity100 · 2011-02-02 05:10 · Score: 1

so, copying is now defined like that.

whatever ill we have in this world, we have due to 'liberal redefining' of concepts when it suits one's needs.

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parent is right, it IS cheating. by unity100 · 2011-02-02 05:14 · Score: 1

so, analyze the following situation and what would you call me if i did that :

at that point in time, as a practical 'noone' on internet, i give out a utility program which acts as a utility plugin in people's browsers, and have it act as spyware, sending what these people select in search results at another SEARCH ENGINE (not just any other website), and then start serving the exact result from my 1 month old page, mixed with my results, but, at the top. voila - i show relevant, good results as google !!

you would call me thief, copycat, bastard, a multitude of things ranging from these to heaven knows what else, and you would be right.

instead of serving some service based on my own effort, i would be ripping other's effort, through SPYWARE on people's computer. the people who may not be even aware of what's happening.

there is nothing to defend about this. it is cheating.

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Read radical news here

why insightful ? by unity100 · 2011-02-02 05:18 · Score: 1

please someone mod the parent down to +1 normal, since s/he apparently didnt read tfa and doesnt even know what it is about.

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Read radical news here

wasting your breath by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 08:52 · Score: 0

You won't find 3 people with mod points willing to waste them like that. Plus you're a day late and a dollar short.

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-02 09:01 · Score: 0

No, it's not a test, but it seems to be common Microsoft practice. From http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379237,00.asp

"If I was Microsoft, I'd argue that it was merely monitoring Google results to compare them to
the Bing results as a service to the user. The bad planted information was some sort of horrible
mistake, and the company don't know exactly what happened. You know, like the early
explanations about how various hidden Digital Research copyright notices somehow ended up
in DOS 1.0 back in the day."

Re:Terrible. but very Microsoft by rtfa-troll · 2011-02-02 20:49 · Score: 1

At that point they wouldn't care about the quality of the results. The consumers would be stuck with their results since they would be the only game in town. In fact they would likely do things like forcing you to go through click through ads to get to searches and making the best search mechanisms only work with IE. There are real reasons for anti-trust laws and they should be applied strongly to Microsoft which is fundamentally an abusive company much more than many others.

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=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-03 03:42 · Score: 0

If I said that to my teacher when caught cheating, I doubt it would have had much sway.

Bad analogy. This isn't a test.

Fine. "If I said that to my car, I doubt it would have had much sway."

plagiarism pure and simple by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-03 03:52 · Score: 0

Reverse engineering someone's search algorithms so you can use them on your own is theft no matter how you look at it. The only way they can prove now that this isn't a case of stolen / reverse engineered search code is to prove that they wrote all the code themselves. Welcome back to the SCO lawsuits.

Conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-03 05:35 · Score: 0

For Bing to get decent results, it has to scrape them from Google.

Just use Google. They don't need to steal anything. They create quality results by themselves.

Re:Cheating? No. Bad analogy. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-05 05:52 · Score: 0

If you don't have to follow the same rules in real life, what's the point of tests?

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Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results

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