Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results

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Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday February 1, 2011 @05:32AM from the everyone-gets-a-c-plus dept.

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."

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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.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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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5. 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.
6. 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
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?

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1. 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.
2. 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.
  
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3. 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.
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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1. 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".
2. 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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3. 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.
4. 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
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?

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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.
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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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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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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