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Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results
An anonymous reader writes "Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google's results, then uses that information to improve Bing's own search listings. Bing doesn't deny this."
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.
Stefan Weitz, director of Microsoft’s Bing search engine:
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
My work here is dung.
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!)