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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

#281

Post by hydrazine »

spoiledtechie wrote: post #127

I personally don't mind if one is copying the search of another. The whole idea is to get the BEST search results possible. And thats what I use a search engine for is getting by far the best results possible. I don't mind how they do it and as far as I can tell they aren't breaking any copyright laws...

In any case, if Bing is indeed copying Google's results, it is utterly unethical even if users are receiving accurate search results. As mentioned in the article, what Bing is doing is analogous to copying Google's "exam," which by any reasonable standard is wrong, even if a "proctor" didn't specifically state this rule.

Perhaps Google has patented a few of its search algorithm components.

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

#283

Post by lhorie »

tmarthal wrote: post #267
lhorie wrote: post #172

A few quick thoughts: - generally speaking, the conclusion seems to be that for regular queries, Bing uses mostly other clues to figure out relevance, so this is basically a storm in a cup of water. Regardless, since both Google's and Bing's algos are closed-source, we're going on faith when either company says data gathered from one of their products doesn't affect search quality. - the whole thing about making a ra…

But, seriously, returning wikipedia as the top result for something with low levenshtein distance to a rare word is not exactly rocket science... Actually, that is Google's core business, and from the amount of revenue it's generated most likely harder than rocket science. The generation between keyword and website content/results is what a search engine is all about, and what Google does (arguably) well. I believe w…

>> Actually, that is Google's core business, and from the amount of revenue it's generated most likely harder than rocket science.

You're talking about all of the work needed to make a search engine good, I'm talking about the specific algorithm needed for that particular type of query (rare, obscure, easily misspelled word). Different scopes.

And again, my observation in that bullet point is that, imho, the "torsoraphy" type of query could have been improved by something like the "close enough to rare word? + does wiki page exist?" algorithm, rather than copying.

Re: recording click history being shady: I don't really see what's so fundamentally different between that and recording surfing habits via ads. It goes back to the first point: Google could say they don't use that data to improve SERP relevance, but we're going on faith on that claim.

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

#284

Post by trustfundbaby »

ghurlman wrote: post #279
trustfundbaby wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not sure Google wants to get pulled into a conversation about automated tracking of user search data. PR "wins" can become PR nightmares in a blink.

Told ya!

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

#285

Post by bambax »

shadowfox wrote: post #261
bambax wrote: post #7

Looks like Microsoft is "innovating" again...

A great deal of value has been added to this conversation by this comment going by the upvotes.

It's a little late for me to elaborate but here's what I meant: Microsoft has a long history of copying its competitors and calling it "innovation". Absent any other evidence, that tends to put the burden of proof on them.

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

#287

Post by orrc »

pbz wrote: post #144
stanleydrew wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what use is the word "similarly" in your comment? Similarly send? As in via HTTP requests? I think that's either obvious or irrelevant or both. Again, if you actually read the article, you will come across the section titled "What About The Google Toolbar & Chrome?" I encourage you to read it. [edit] Also, see this comment and patio11's subcomment further down the page, both of which were written an hour before…

Quote from the article: "In fact, Google stressed that the only information that flows back at all from Chrome is what people are searching for from within the browser, if they are using Google as their search engine." I'm pretty positive that's not true. If you run Fiddler when browsing with Chrome you will see constant hits to toolbarqueries.clients.google.com whether you're using Google or not. I could be browsing…

I see this too, if I have autofill enabled, and at least one autofill address entry.

I would guess that Chrome is sending a hash of the (perhaps URL + method?), plus a hash of each of the tags, and Google returns some sort of information about what kind of form it is?

If so, it would mean it's pretty easy for Google to determine which sites you're on from the pattern of hashes sent for each site. e.g. I see this data sent in the clear for pretty much every page on https://www.facebook.com/

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

#288

Post by vanessafox »

sjs382 wrote: post #213
yaix wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"...

Well, I'm not seeing that result now, likely because the results are now filled with actual news about hiybbprqag. But if Vanessa Fox Nude was ranking then that likely means that some signal was associating hibbpraqag with Google and that either they're using (at least in part) a really old index or the crawler they're using doesn't follow redirects very well.

vanessafoxnude.com has been redirecting to my current site for several years now, but back when the original site was active, much of the incoming anchor text was related to Google and search.

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