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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

#211

Post by DenisM »

encoderer wrote: post #122
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…

In short, Bing Toolbar infers relationship between words on the page and the next page the user clicks on. Google's team purposefully confined Bing Toolbar behavior-tracking algorithm to their use of google.com search result page, and then cried fool about "bing stealing Google's search results".

This is disgraceful attention-whoring on Google's part. Quite surprising, too, as I don't remember them ever stooping that low.

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

#212

Post by sjs382 »

yaix wrote: post #176
sjs382 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that you don't try to correct queries. I hate when Google auto-corrects my query and I need to click another link to get to my actual query. Thanks for that!

Or you just "quote" your original misspelled query and Google will search for the misspelled version without any additional click.

Quotes provide you with exact match results. Putting quotes around an entire phrase isn't what I intend sometimes, and quoting each term in the query is just excessive. In that case, I'll just click the extra link...

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

#213

Post by sjs382 »

yaix wrote: post #173
sjs382 wrote: post #48

No surprise, as both DDG and Blekko disclose that they use Bing for long-tail queries, but it works at both of those engines, too: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag http://duckduckgo.com/?q=mbzrxpgjys http://duckduckgo.com/?q=indoswiftjobinproduction http://blekko.com/ws/hiybbprqag http://blekko.com/ws/mbzrxpgjys http://blekko.com/ws/indoswiftjobinproduction

You're totally right, nice find. Just happy that my current SE favourite does not seem to copy and to actually have their very own results: http://entireweb.com/#q=hiybbprqag

But the 3rd result (at the moment) is "Vanessa fox Nude"...

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

#214

Post by axod »

encoderer wrote: post #122
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…

I don't think it's embarrassing to point out that Microsoft is playing dirty.

They played dirty with Netscape/IE in the 90s and look what happened.

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

#215

Post by epi0Bauqu »

sjs382 wrote: post #210
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.

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

There were a number of bugs around the first result that this whole thing uncovered, so it could have been intermittent. Our backfill in the case of no results can vary. It shouldn't have been showing anything ever beyond the first result though.

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

#217

Post by trustfundbaby »

ghurlman wrote: post #37
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.

give it time ... that headline sells itself. If Google pushes the issue, it should be on every night news report by tomorrow night.

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

#218

Post by karanr »

powrtoch wrote: post #22
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…

That sounds all well and good, but in terms of cost vs. benefit, it's way easier to make a good application by stealing the years of hard work of the industry leaders than it is to reinvent everything and try to come up with your own clever tweaks to improve it. If you could do it without getting caught, it would practically be a no-brainer.

Yes but it is one thing if a small startup does it, and its another if a giant like Microsoft does it. In a way its applying a double standard, but i think Microsoft has enough money to invest is innovating in search space. Ultimately you can't really prove its illegal, so its a matter of ethics. Strangely we would all encourage a startup to copy what it can, so it can focus on the core innovation and not be bogged down, but we look down on Microsoft. Why is that?

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

#219

Post by DenisM »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #66
raganwald wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Anyone can test that Microsoft's software sends the clicks back to Microsoft, although I believe Microsoft sends the data back by SSL, so it's harder to verify even that than you'd expect. Google's search results are blocked in robots.txt, so I don't believe Bing has been able to crawl our search results directly. All the evidence points to users' clicks on Google, which are then sent to Microsoft. Microsoft has (so…

>I believe Microsoft sends the data back by SSL, so it's harder to verify even that than you'd expect.

Please. Adding my own SSL cert to my own laptop is not harder than I'd expect. Certainly not harder than many other things you did in setting up this experiment.

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

#220

Post by T-R »

seanalltogether wrote: post #23
krosaen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the link between the obscure query and the click on the page wouldn't have been made without bing knowing the user first searched for the query on google, no? if it were simply boosting page clicks that would be one thing, but how else could rim.com rank 1st for "mbzrxpgjys"?

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.

I think this would still leave Google with a fairly strong argument - if Bing does it for all search engines, then they're effectively copying whoever is most popular. Since it's done through Internet Explorer, which is still bundled with Windows in most places, they could try to make the argument that Microsoft is using their position in the OS market to crush competition in other markets.
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