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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

#201

Post by chollida1 »

ig1 wrote: post #170
forgotusername wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Matt's allegation is softened by "I believe" here: there appears to be nothing that conclusively indicates Bing is solely targeting Google. For example, the observed behaviour could be a side-effect of a generic algorithm to extract and associate search queries with a user's click stream, which is only a minor variant of what Google itself does with its own toolbar. If the case described above were true, then al…

Associating search queries and click stream behaviour is fine if it's your own search engine. Doing it for someone else's search engine isn't (regardless of who's doing it).

> Associating search queries and click stream behaviour is fine if it's your own search engine. Doing it for someone else's search engine isn't (regardless of who's doing it).

Why? This seems like a great idea.

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

#202

Post by callahad »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #187
alecco wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in this case DDG does give Google's auto-corrected (without even telling you!) and I bet it happens to many terms as it is mostly a proxy/filter of Bing.

No, actually they shouldn't be in there. Are you seeing them? If so it is a bug. It is not showing up on my computers.

I'm still seeing it on tmbg, but thor and www seem fine:

http://tmbg.duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag

http://thor.duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag

Edit: The same appears to be true for mbzrxpgjys and indoswiftjobinproduction

Edit 2: Hey, that's weird. Adding a comma, semicolon, period, or other symbol to the beginning or end of the query makes the gamed results show up on top at thor and www as well. Seems to work for all the terms at issue:

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag%2C

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=----hiybbprqag----

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

#203

Post by cjoh »

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…

For all the money, resources and engineering talent that Microsoft has, you'd think they wouldn't need to do this, though. That's what's baffling to me.

Call Google the market leader all you want, but let's not forget that Microsoft's market cap is around 40 billion dollars greater than Google's.

That's more than Research in Motion's total value!

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

#204

Post by user24 »

cjoh wrote: post #203
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…

For all the money, resources and engineering talent that Microsoft has, you'd think they wouldn't need to do this, though. That's what's baffling to me. Call Google the market leader all you want, but let's not forget that Microsoft's market cap is around 40 billion dollars greater than Google's. That's more than Research in Motion's total value!

all search engines make use of a variety of signals. Bing decided to use what users click on as a signal. Google spotted it and thought it was 'zomg bing are stealing our results'. I don't understand why you think taking advantage of a new signal to improve search is not a smart move by Bing?

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

#205

Post by contextfree »

seasoup wrote: post #190

Wow, I'm surprised by all the developers on Microsofts side on this one. Google spends a lot of money developing proprietary algorithms for determining search results. Microsoft is then stepping in and taking advantage of the money Google spent by copying some of their results. It's rather like someone taking the results of a Consumer Reports list and publishing it themselves. It borders on illegal, and it's definite…

"If it's quality is so poor, then why is Bing stealing its results?"

Bing is apparently using toolbar click data (AFAICT it hasn't been shown that this is specifically targeted at Google or even at search engines in general) when it has no other information for the given search term. That has very little relation to the quality of Google's search in general.

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

#206

Post by DenisM »

TL;DR

1.Bing is inferring search results from user behavior, collected via Bing Toolbar

2. Google team makes an experiment: using Bing Toolbar to feed Bing particular behavior. Namely, they all go from a search result page on Google.com laden with a unique word to a particular target site.

3. Bing infers connection between the unique word and the target site.

4. Google cries cheating.

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

#207

Post by spot »

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…

FYI Android started before iPhone was released. It's based on the Sidekick.

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

#208

Post by epi0Bauqu »

callahad wrote: post #202
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, actually they shouldn't be in there. Are you seeing them? If so it is a bug. It is not showing up on my computers.

I'm still seeing it on tmbg, but thor and www seem fine: http://tmbg.duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag http://thor.duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag Edit: The same appears to be true for mbzrxpgjys and indoswiftjobinproduction Edit 2: Hey, that's weird. Adding a comma, semicolon, period, or other symbol to the beginning or end of the query makes the gamed results show up on top at thor and w…

You're finding the edges of my intelligence layer :). Should be fixed now.

Note that some of those servers don't get updated often.

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

#209

Post by alecco »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #187
alecco wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in this case DDG does give Google's auto-corrected (without even telling you!) and I bet it happens to many terms as it is mostly a proxy/filter of Bing.

No, actually they shouldn't be in there. Are you seeing them? If so it is a bug. It is not showing up on my computers.

It was there using those links when I posted, but not anymore.

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

#210

Post by sjs382 »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #187
alecco wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in this case DDG does give Google's auto-corrected (without even telling you!) and I bet it happens to many terms as it is mostly a proxy/filter of Bing.

No, actually they shouldn't be in there. Are you seeing them? If so it is a bug. It is not showing up on my computers.

Ah. They were loading the same results as Google and Bing when I posted that. They aren't now.
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