Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

searchengineland.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 288 posts

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

#51

Post by GavinB »

raganwald wrote: post #15

Hmmm. Let's say that Bing sets up a script that sends queries to Google and then records the results. That's clearly copying. But what Bing does is when you use its toolbar, it watches what you do and uses that information to rank results. Is that really copying? It showed Google's Honeypot page because Google's engineers were clicking on the Honeypot page with the toolbar installed. That isn't copying Google's resul…

Let's say that Bing sets up a script that sends queries to Google and then records the results. That's clearly copying.

I'd question even that hyperbolic interpretation. Let's say that Google sets up a script that sends queries to websites and then record the results and incorporates what links are shown on that site into their search rankings. Is that clearly copying? No, that's just pagerank.

If you have a web directory, a link page, a blogroll--isn't Google "copying" your work by using it to improve its search results? How is that any different from what Bing's doing?

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

#52

Post by Nitramp »

"Is this illegal?"

IANAL, but in certain jurisdictions, most certainly yes. Many countries have copyright laws that protect compilations of things that are individually not worthy of copyright, for example telephone books. Copying down an individual telephone book entry is of course not a copyright violation, but copying the whole listing in a systematic fashion is.

I'd guess that this law applies to search engine rankings as well - rankings/listings of individual items that are not protected by copyright, but where a lot of effort goes into producing the listing itself.

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

#53

Post by raganwald »

ig1 wrote: post #49
raganwald wrote: post #15

Hmmm. Let's say that Bing sets up a script that sends queries to Google and then records the results. That's clearly copying. But what Bing does is when you use its toolbar, it watches what you do and uses that information to rank results. Is that really copying? It showed Google's Honeypot page because Google's engineers were clicking on the Honeypot page with the toolbar installed. That isn't copying Google's resul…

As it happens there's an exact historical precedent for this. Post code long/lat data is copyrighted in the UK, but users were using Google Maps (and others) to do conversion and supply them to open source databases, the end result is that Google had to change their licensing/API to restrict this sort of behaviour. Just because you're copying the data indirectly through a third party doesn't mean you're not breaching…

Interesting case to raise. Reminds me of the NFL terms voiced after every game about the broadcast being for private use only. I imagine that if their terms don't already include a clause like this, they can try to suggest that a toolbar tracking user clicks is violating the terms.

Very murky waters. If Google starts complaining that other people are tracking their users, they might end up educating users about how much they and their advertisers track.

...I hope DuckDuckGo figures out a way to capitalize on this brouhaha...

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

#54

Post by brudgers »

Since when has reverse engineering been cheating? If the article is correct, there still is no allegation that Google's algorithms have been used. I don't think Google is in much of any position to cry foul over any company using data mining to tailor search results.

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

#55

Post by raganwald »

GavinB wrote: post #51
raganwald wrote: post #15

Hmmm. Let's say that Bing sets up a script that sends queries to Google and then records the results. That's clearly copying. But what Bing does is when you use its toolbar, it watches what you do and uses that information to rank results. Is that really copying? It showed Google's Honeypot page because Google's engineers were clicking on the Honeypot page with the toolbar installed. That isn't copying Google's resul…

Let's say that Bing sets up a script that sends queries to Google and then records the results. That's clearly copying. I'd question even that hyperbolic interpretation. Let's say that Google sets up a script that sends queries to websites and then record the results and incorporates what links are shown on that site into their search rankings. Is that clearly copying? No, that's just pagerank. If you have a web dire…

We agree that it is copying, the subject open for interpretation is whether it's "wrong" in some way. Information is all about copying, that's the whole point :-)

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

#56

Post by taylorbuley »

danpker wrote: post #26
seanalltogether wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes there is a hard link happening between a google search result and a link being clicked, however googles argument isn't as strong if it turns out bing is doing this for all search engines. It might be that they aren't targeting google specifically, but instead they're targeting all search sites generically.

But then still, the Bing toolbar is watching what you're searching for and recording that information. That's a pretty big privacy issue

This is what all toolbars do, and is largely the point of why big companies offer them and pay little software companies to make them optional installs (see Corel's WinZip, which installs the Google toolbar)

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

#57

Post by amalcon »

raganwald wrote: post #15

Hmmm. Let's say that Bing sets up a script that sends queries to Google and then records the results. That's clearly copying. But what Bing does is when you use its toolbar, it watches what you do and uses that information to rank results. Is that really copying? It showed Google's Honeypot page because Google's engineers were clicking on the Honeypot page with the toolbar installed. That isn't copying Google's resul…

There are browser toolbars that aren't spyware? I'd think anyone likely to actually hear about this would have already been assuming that all browser toolbars are spyware.

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

#59

Post by raganwald »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #50

I had a front row seat for this test. I believe the experiment we ran provides conclusive proof. I'm on a panel with a representative from Bing later today and I'll ask Bing about this directly.

The article suggests that the Bing toolbar monitors what its user click and uses that information to improve Bing search results. Is that what you have conclusively proved?

I'm interested in another experiment. If you set up a honeypot, search for the term, but never click on the link, does the honeypot start showing up in Bing? The article doesn't say whether you tried this. Did you try it? Are Bing scraping your results from the page or only tracking their users clicks?

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

#60

Post by 271828183 »

jbeda wrote: post #20
ry0ohki wrote: post #9

Doesn't the Google toolbar do essentially the same thing they are saying IE is doing?

This is addressed in the article. It says that google uses toolbar latency to determine page load latency and that is the only way toolbar data affects page ranking.

I seriously doubt that is the only thing they use the information for, and unless someone can find somewhere in the google toolbar/chrome EULAs that specifically asserts what they will/won't do with the data, I'd assume the they use it for all sorts of things.
Post reply on HN