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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

#121

Post by nlogn »

podperson wrote: post #108
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.

Bing copying Google's search results is just evil. Not like copying Apple's iPhone design and user interface and giving it away to Apple's competitors, which is good. Right? It's ugly and immoral and probably legal. Good job catching Microsoft at it (and I think the really really unethical and scary bit is that Microsoft is cheerfully stealing info from users via their browser). I also realize that Google got where i…

I don't think Android devices being similar in some ways to the iPhone is even remotely analogous to what Bing is doing here. One is called healthy competition (and I don't see how Android is copying iOS). The other is literally just copying data.

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

#122

Post by encoderer »

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.

It's embarrassing for Google to complain about this. You FINALLY get a little competition on your turf and you try to make some big issue that, as a market leader, the product you produce is being watched, analyzed and in some ways incorporated by your competitor.

There is no victim here. They are not taking your 1st result and copying it. They are taking the result the user clicked. Obviously you didn't predict that with your algorithm or you'd have always made that the 1st result. Instead, what they're tracking is user behavior, not your raw ranking.

Obviously users give Google implicit permission to track their behavior by using your product. And similarly, by installing the Bing toolbar, they're giving Bing that permission.

This is beneath you Matt and it's beneath Google.

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

#123

Post by user24 »

mvandemar wrote: post #112
user24 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suspicion what you'll find is that Bing use the toolbar to match $current_page_content with $clicked_page_content. When $current_page_content contains obscure words, that becomes the only signal, and so bing's engine will naturally associate it with $clicked_page. In other words, there's a relationship between Page A and Page B if there exists a link beween them (==PageRank). But the strength of the relation…

This makes a lot of sense, and would have be easy enough for Google to test as well, creating some tiny, brand new, never before heard of test search engine that Bing would have no reason to copy, see if the same thing happened.

That would be a nice way of testing it.

edit: I'm not even sure if it's only search engines that are being analysed by Bing or all pages, but it's possible that it is just SEs - they could be capturing query terms distinctly.

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

#124

Post by 271828183 »

stanleydrew wrote: post #106
brudgers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt, don't Google Toolbar and the Chrome Browser similarly send information to Google for use in improving their services?

If you read the article and other comments here it's been made perfectly clear that the Google toolbar and Chrome browser are not sending similar data back to Google.

Ah, at least the google toolbar does. If you enable PageRank on the Google Toolbar it sends back all the urls you visit just like the bing toolbar.

From the toolbar privacy policy: "Toolbar's enhanced features, such as PageRank and Sidewiki, operate by sending Google the addresses and other information about sites at the time you visit them."

Google has managed to demonstrate one way MS appears to be using the data. What does google do with their trove of data? That's a lot of data to collect and not do anything with.

If they want to make it perfectly clear they should add into their privacy policies and EULAs.

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

#126

Post by jamesjyu »

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

And that is explicitly stated in their tos. There's no hiding here.

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

#127

Post by spoiledtechie »

I personally don't mind if one is copying the search of another. The whole idea is to get the BEST search results possible. And thats what I use a search engine for is getting by far the best results possible. I don't mind how they do it and as far as I can tell they aren't breaking any copyright laws...

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

#128

Post by encoderer »

51Cards wrote: post #119
encoderer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrible analogy. This isn't a test. This is a product.

Actually it is a test, and how well you answer it is directly responsible to how your business will or won't succeed. Google has worked out their algorithms for processing the incoming data and generating an answer. Bing has apparently used Google's answer as a comparison to whether they are getting it right or not and when not, subbing in the other answer. While in business this may not be illegal, is it still very…

No, it's a product. Come on. Every product is a "test" of the market so in that one definition of "test", yes. But not in an academic sense, which is what you meant. Because only in an academic sense does the concept of "cheating" exist.

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

#129

Post by brudgers »

user24 wrote: post #105
brudgers wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft isn't using strike rate data in the important sense which you imply - the strike rate for Google is advertising revenue. It's not as if Microsoft is collecting info on the advertisements displayed and then soliciting those advertisers to spend their dollars on Bing (at least that's not part of the allegations). I am pretty confident that Google feeds every bit of legally collected relevant data back into th…

no, the "strike rate" is precision/recall. Good advertising CTRs is a side-effect of relevancy. Relevancy is measured by precision and recall. edit to expand: If the measure by which a search engine evaluated itself was advertising revenues, they'd all have massive intrusive adverts, and no users. The only viable measure can be the quality of the search results themselves. As a happy coincidence, if you build somethi…

I believe that Google and Microsoft evaluate their search engines by entirely different measures. Google primarily by advertising revenue, Microsoft primarily measures by preventing searches using Google. Sure the ad money is nice for Microsoft, but they don't need it for their business to be profitable and they would be doing major research into search anyway because of its importance to businesses - they sell databases after all.

This whole episode points to the sort of counter-espionage operations the two companies are engaged in. Look how important a propaganda victory is for Google? It strains credulity to believe that the release of this information on the day of the panel discussion is pure coincidence.

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

#130

Post by Vlasta »

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.

I usually criticize Microsoft, but I am on their side in this case.

Why shouldn't Microsoft be using this kind of data? Google search result pages are part of the internet just like any other publicly available web site. Microsoft monitors what the users are clicking on Google and probably on Bing and other sites. So what? Monitoring users is not a new thing. It may be unethical and I may personally hate it, but almost everyone is doing it.

Google should stop whining about this and make their search result the best they can. If they had the best search engine, Bing could come close, but never overcome Google by just copying part of it.

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