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Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

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Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

#31

Post by mkowalski »

It's interresting. A little bit like browser wars, isn't it? Browsers are really similar between themselves. If any new noteworthy feature appears in one, it is very likely to be copied to another, which is a very good thing for end users and is a reason for which competitiveness is good. At the end of the day, users want more-less the same functionality, no matter which browser they use. There are some differences in details and quality, but rather minor.

Both Bing and Google are targeted towards mass market and I think people expect the same from both. If Google does it right, there is nothing more to invent. And even if there is, it is probably pretty expensive. It is so much easier to copy than to invent from scratch, just to get something almost exactly the same as Google :)

I am really interrested in what could Bing do to be REALLY different or better than Google. And if they did, Google would most likely do something very similar :)

Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

#32

Post by jobu »

tptacek wrote: post #6

"Is it illegal? Is it cheating? Is it unfair?" Who cares? Google already got everything it needed out of this situation: a gigantic PR win, and a morale boost for their own team. Well played.

I'm happy for Google. Now can they get back to improving their search results? The changes they made last week (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152286) did help some technical searches, but many results are still being overwhelmed by SEO spammer crap.

Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

#33

Post by mcrittenden »

keltex wrote: post #10

Search for "hacker news" on both. The results are quite different. One might argue Bing is better because they don't have a duplicate result at the top.

That's not really relevant - the article says that by no means are search results identical for every search.

Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

#37

Post by ghurlman »

tptacek wrote: post #6

"Is it illegal? Is it cheating? Is it unfair?" Who cares? Google already got everything it needed out of this situation: a gigantic PR win, and a morale boost for their own team. Well played.

I'm not sure how gigantic that PR win is, if I had to come to HN to hear about it.

Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

#38

Post by gyardley »

random42 wrote: post #29
gyardley wrote: post #25

Sort of petulant on Google's part to release this, no? Of course your competitors are going to copy you. It's not innovative, and you might consider it 'cheating' if you forget that each and every one of us are building off of a foundation laid by other people. But it works, and that's why it happens and will continue to happen.

You are misunderstanding the word, 'Copy'. Here, it does not mean like "3-D movies is a great idea, lets copy it from avatar" . Its more on the lines on "This code is great, lets copy it" . Copy == getting inspired by brilliance of an idea and implement on your own in the first case. Copy == stealing in the latter case. Copying (Ctrl C+ Ctrl V), google search results is theft, not "getting inspired" from previous bod…

No one's stealing Google's code.

Here, it means 'we have evidence, given to us by our users who agreed to share their web traffic with us, that showing this result for this query is a great idea -- so let's do that.'

People obtain data on their competitors' performance all the time and tailor their products accordingly. It's not theft, it's competitive intelligence.

Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

#40

Post by kenjackson »

wccrawford wrote: post #14

It may not be illegal or 'cheating', but it's incredibly stupid for the same reason cheating is: Without the person you are cheating from, you can't pass the test! In the case, the customers don't get relevant results unless other potential customers use the competition! In short, Bing's results are only good if Google is popular. Why would you invest time relying on your competition? Shouldn't you be striving to mat…

Isn't this just the McDonald's v Subway/Burger King example? McDonald's has the research and foot traffic. Rather than do your own, watch where the successful McDonald's go and then put your restaurant across the street.

If you have a bunch of users searching for "XYZ" on a different search engine and consistently going to link A -- wouldn't that imply it was relevant? You'd do the exact same thing for searches on your own search engine. The only difference is people have opted in to allowing you to have this info _implicitly_ by going to your search engine vs giving you this permission _explicitly_ by clicking through the EULA for the toolbar.

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