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Google's Search Copying Accusation Called 'Silly'

Posted by timothy on from the well-that's-not-very-silly-now-is-it? dept.

itwbennett writes "Google's Bing sting, reported in Slashdot just days ago and subsequently denied by Microsoft, is now being called 'silly' and 'petty' by search industry analysts and execs. The reason: it would be impossible for Microsoft to use the copied results to reverse engineer Google's search algorithms. And in fact it is more likely that Microsoft was conducting competitive research. Charlene Li, founder of technology research and advisory firm Altimeter Group, saw Google's actions as a misguided response to a real threat from a competitor in its core search business. 'Google isn't used to having competition. You look at this incident and you wonder why they are doing this. It feels amateurish in a way, a kind of 'they're not playing fair' attitude,' she said."

4 of 380 comments (clear)

  1. Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They don't have to copy an algorithm if they are just copying search results. This response is amateur.

    1. Re:Seriously? by ILuvRamen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree totally. What "research" includes looking for an already searched term on Google and then looking at what results come up...then slapping them into your own live result list for the general public? Bing's cheap algorithm is some search and crawling technology from like 2007 mixed with marketing, marketing, MARKETING! Oh, and flashy features that don't really work. So it's not that shocking that they're ripping off other people's results because their product is pretty hollow to begin with.

      --
      Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
    2. Re:Seriously? by Korin43 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hey, looking at the test next to mine isn't cheating. It's not like I could reverse-engineer the other students algorithm by looking at his test!

  2. "Competitive Research" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't see this phrase going down well in any other industry. If you copy a map or a book or the design for a car from a different company in the same field, you wouldn't get out of it by calling it "competitive research". Microsoft doesn't need to reverse engineer google's algorithm if they can just steal their results directly; in fact, it's simpler this way because it cuts out the middle part where they even bother to figure out how it works.