Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

roughlydrafted.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 133 posts

Re: Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

#11

Post by sajidnizami »

First article I've read in a while that's taking Microsoft's side in the whole situation. Every paragraph of this screams publicity. I am just wondering here if this is a PR tactic. Here I would be happy to see a balanced review of both companies behavior but this is just one sided bashing.

Shame on your pretentious, obnoxious, indefensibly egregious double standard in the field of using public information to turn a profit. Google indexes public content but how it aggregates it and displays it is their deed. The ordering, etc is Google's work not content creators.Copying it is just like copying an IP. I would love to see this go to court and be fought.

Re: Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

#12

Post by ericd »

kevin_morrill wrote: post #9
axod wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also websites can opt-out of having their content indexed. How can Google opt-out of having its search index copied by Microsoft? The funniest argument in this has been "Bing hasn't got the data, Google has an unfair advantage etc" as if Microsoft didn't exist before Google. Microsoft have had years headstart to get their online division doing something worthwhile, but they still can't get it right.

Put up a terms of use or force users to accept a license agreement. They do no such thing today. So I think you'd have a hard time saying Microsoft has done anything legally wrong here.

We're discussing morality, not legality. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.

Re: Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

#13

Post by mooism2 »

va_coder wrote: post #4

This is starting to get interesting. Google makes money aggregating other people's content. What happens when people aggregate Google's content? What's fair?

Google don't object to meta search engines (e.g. Dogpile) aggregating their results with those of other search engines.

Google are objecting to Bing seemingly passing off Google results as Bing's own (and not including their ads, no doubt).

It's clearly legitimate for Bing to index a Google results page if it follows a link to it (assuming absence of robots.txt etc) and visa versa.

Does it matter that Bing obtained the Google results via a search from a human not affiliated with Bing?

Does it matter that Google blocks crawlers from accessing its search results, using robots.txt?

Does it matter that Google's result pages don't include the noindex instruction?

Tbh, if I was Google I'd mark my results as noindex and see whether Bing respected that.

Re: Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

#15

Post by mooism2 »

axod wrote: post #7
geuis wrote: post #3

I read half of this. Its late, and I don't have the time or energy to refute point by point every single wrong thing that is written in that half. Its easy to sum up. Yes, Google indexes hundreds of millions of sites. It does so in order for other people to be able to search and find those sites, which is important to their owners. Its a symbiotic relationship, not theft of intellectual property. Google has spent bil…

Also websites can opt-out of having their content indexed. How can Google opt-out of having its search index copied by Microsoft? The funniest argument in this has been "Bing hasn't got the data, Google has an unfair advantage etc" as if Microsoft didn't exist before Google. Microsoft have had years headstart to get their online division doing something worthwhile, but they still can't get it right.

?

Re: Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

#16

Post by InclinedPlane »

redthrowaway wrote: post #8
InclinedPlane wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain what you mean when you say that Google makes money by aggregating other people's content? Google makes money by indexing other people's content and driving traffic to other people's sites. That hardly seems like a bad thing.

Google News is an aggregator, hence Rupert Murdoch's problem with it.

Google doesn't make any money off of Google News.

Re: Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

#17

Post by gildur »

gildur wrote: post #2

Google makes money out of being the #1 search engine. Concurrence from others is one thing. Concurrence from someone stealing your source code (open source or not) is a whole different story. That should be reason enough, in my humble opinion.

Oh I obviously misunderstood the article. I'm so sorry.

Re: Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

#18

Post by access_denied »

gildur wrote: post #2

Google makes money out of being the #1 search engine. Concurrence from others is one thing. Concurrence from someone stealing your source code (open source or not) is a whole different story. That should be reason enough, in my humble opinion.

You mean competition, not concurrence. use dictionary, HN will upvote. :-)

Re: Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?

#19

Post by axod »

mooism2 wrote: post #15
axod wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also websites can opt-out of having their content indexed. How can Google opt-out of having its search index copied by Microsoft? The funniest argument in this has been "Bing hasn't got the data, Google has an unfair advantage etc" as if Microsoft didn't exist before Google. Microsoft have had years headstart to get their online division doing something worthwhile, but they still can't get it right.

?

I'm pretty sure microsoft doesn't care...

They're capturing what users click on, which doesn't include any information about the wishes of the website owner.

Post reply on HN