Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by krakensden » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 7:57 PM UTC

recoiledsnake wrote: post #169

TimothyBurgess wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we all know, this isn't the first time Microsoft has copied someone else. And I'm sure it won't be the last. I think Google has a right to complain. Microsoft has resorted to these less than innovative tactics to monopolize themselves for a long time now, and it isn't fair to companies like Google who have worked their butts off (and gave 1.8 million shares - $336M in 2005 - to Stanford for the PageRank algorithm)…

Err, by that line of thinking, Google leveraged Linux (the hard work of volunteers) to earn tens of billions and does not release the modified code for use of the volunteers. Of course they are not required to, but it isn't fair to Linux developers who have worked their butts off to develop Linux.

They employ Andrew Morton and Ted T'so, and have been working pretty hard to get the delta between their custom Linux and upstream down- I'd say they've been pretty fair to Linux developers.

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

#222

Post by machinecopy » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 7:59 PM UTC

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…

Good explanation, I should formulate this as:

You take a donkey an some carrots, then you show the donkey than walking by this route he can eat a lot of carrots.

  The donkey learn the route and  then you complain about the donkey is eating the carrots you put there.

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

#223

Post by rjvir » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 8:10 PM UTC

Perhaps Bing tracks clicks for every search engine, not only Google. If so, they are not copying Google, but legally tracking user behavior across the web.

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

#224

Post by TheCondor » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 8:12 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #214

encoderer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have a very long history of playing dirty. Lotus learned it, MS took information Lotus shared with them and then shared it with Excel and Office and they supposedly kept Lotus on an API changing treadmill. Digital Research learned it, MS wrote code that made Windows 3.x crash if it detected DR-DOS. Netscape learned it. Arguably, IBM(OS/2) and any other operating system vendor learned it in the 1990s as well, MS charged premiums if hardware vendors wanted to install non-Windows operating systems. They sort of tried to do it to Intuit, they made a competitor and then effectively gave it away for free. Enough so that a lot of folks avoid Mono like it's, well, actually mono. They've established that reputation, and most of the time, by the time it became clear what was going on, MS had already done irreparable damage.

It is kind of embarrassing for Google, but if it is real and it continues, it's better to address it now rather than after MS becomes a titan of search and Google's market has eroded. At times, it seems like MS has changed in ways, but fundamentally they're still run by the same guys. Remember that when you play your Xbox or use Bing or any MS products, they don't like to see other successful software companies.

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

#225

Post by othermaciej » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 8:14 PM UTC

nlogn wrote: post #121

podperson wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The original Android phone design looked like this: http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/androidphone.jpg

Then iPhone came out and it looked like this: http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/...

Now Android phones look like this: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2795/4208849005_dd4b608729.jp...

You don't see any signs of copying here?

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

#226

Post by sjs382 » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 8:15 PM UTC

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #215

sjs382 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for the clarification. I use DDG as my primary search, and love reading about how it works.

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

#227

Post by barista » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 8:17 PM UTC

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

It only records that when the user has explicitly agreed to send anonymous data. chrome and Google toolbar do that too and so do most of the toolbars out there.

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

#228

Post by barista » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 8:17 PM UTC

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

It only records that when the user has explicitly agreed to send anonymous data. chrome and Google toolbar do that too and so do most of the toolbars out there.

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

#229

Post by barista » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 8:17 PM UTC

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

It only records that when the user has explicitly agreed to send anonymous data. chrome and Google toolbar do that too and so do most of the toolbars out there.

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

#230

Post by ZoFreX » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 8:20 PM UTC

sjs382 wrote: post #212

yaix wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

A timesaver that might be useful on the edge cases is to prefix terms with a plus sign. +the +quick +brown +dog is easier to type than "the" "quick" "brown" "dog", and should have the same results.