Live data from Hacker News

Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

searchengineland.com

251–260 of 288 posts

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

#251
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let’s agree “not hiding” is what is in the demo video. TOS… we all know they could add that you sell the soul and the virginity of your mother in there, no one would read it.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

poacher69, we crawl the public web. Anyone that blocks us out with robots.txt, we won't crawl. If you check bing.com/robots.txt, it has "Disallow: /search" . So no, we won't crawl Bing's search results pages. If anything, users tend to complain when search results from Lycos or wherever show up in Google.

http://www.bing.com/robots.txt User-agent: * Disallow: /search Funny thing: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Abing.com%2Fsearch%2F I was gonna call out Matt for crawling bing's search results but I'm guessing Microsoft hasn't realized they return results from the / S earch/ folder. ;)

Once again Microsoft is bitten by expecting case insensitivity.

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

#253
post #161

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…

"The takeaway in't whether Bing copies Google. The takeaway is that Bing's toolbar is spyware" And also that you can control search results in Bing. Nice feature for advertisers.

You might need to hold in your hands the ethics of the webspam team at a major search engine, though.

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

#254

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…

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)…

You clearly didn't read the whole article. If you did, you clearly didn't understand the article. Step back a little bit, fanboy. Microsoft wasn't copying anyone here.

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

#255

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 think they are complaining because it could be far more widespread: it would actually be easier for the head than the long tail. Where it‘s harder is for News, and Bing appears to lag for recent results.

I remember that when Bing went out, everyone was wondering how close to Google the results were (and talked about it as a good thing).

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

#256
post #211

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…

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…

They may just be using terms in the referring URL rather than the referring page. It'd probably yield better data. Most site-specific search pages would have the search term in the URL.

I wouldn't be surprised if they're more interested in data from domain-specific sites like epicurious than generic search sites like Google.

I'd also guess that this won't work once the SEO guys figure out they can feed fake clickstreams to MS.

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

#257
post #254

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)…

You clearly didn't read the whole article. If you did, you clearly didn't understand the article. Step back a little bit, fanboy. Microsoft wasn't copying anyone here.

Oh I definitely did read it in its entirety and understood it perfectly. What you're failing to do is see the whole picture.

Let's put it this way... if Google hadn't bought the PageRank algorithm from Stanford and put years of work into perfecting their search results, Microsoft wouldn't have any way to track which Google search results users click. It's an unfair tactic that clearly demonstrates Microsoft's sketchiness and desire to monopolize themselves (by any means necessary, "evil" or not) wherever there's a computer.

As for the fanboy comment... I'm certainly not a fanboy but I'll let the following speak for itself: Microsoft Internet Explorer vs Google Chrome

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When identical inputs create identical outputs using different algorithms, it's reverse engineering not copying.

Except the algorithms are not really different. one algorithm is just a wrapper over the second algorithm. the crux of the matter is really in just second algo.

It's not a wrapper. Bing isn't passing requests to the Google API and then returning the results on the Bing page. Keep in mind that 93/100 of the seeds Google injected into Bing's database were filtered out.

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

#259
post #256
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They may just be using terms in the referring URL rather than the referring page. It'd probably yield better data. Most site-specific search pages would have the search term in the URL. I wouldn't be surprised if they're more interested in data from domain-specific sites like epicurious than generic search sites like Google. I'd also guess that this won't work once the SEO guys figure out they can feed fake clickstre…

Referring URL? Oh right, Google intercepts all search result clicks through a redirector, and includes the search term in the intercepting URL. Yeah, the unique words in that URL could figure into describing the content of the final destination page (after redirect), the same way anchor text figures as well.
Post reply on HN