Microsoft Vehemently Denies Google's "Bing Sting"

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday February 3, 2011 @03:08AM from the big-surprise-here dept.

eldavojohn writes "In a blog post titled 'Setting the Record Straight,' Microsoft's senior vice president of online services, Yusuf Mehdi, addressed Google's 'Bing Sting' operation saying, 'We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting.' Mehdi went on to claim that Google engaged in 'click fraud' in order to rig up their alleged 'experiment.' Mehdi added, 'That's right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results. What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn't already know.' The struggle for Bing to usurp Google as number one in search continues."

1 of 596 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Evidence and Explanation by jlusk4 · 2011-02-03 03:50 · Score: 0, Flamebait

MS is lying and you're a chump. (Sorry.)
(1) Both IE and the Bing toolbar are from MS. Doesn't matter whether they use one or the other; the directive at MS has come down from on high: use Google's results.
(2) The Google search results are only one input into MS's algorithm (they shouldn't be an input /at all/.) Of course all 100 honeypots won't show up. The fact that any did at all is incriminating, given that the data is completely synthetic.