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

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

#111

Post by ramidarigaz »

gcb wrote: post #110
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…

Wrong. Google uses the link-out of other sites to rank the linked site. So if I have a site that review sites about x, google will use my links to rank the sites about x. It will benefit google, sites about x, advertisers for x, users searching for x. But NEVER me. now, replace "me" for "google" and "google"for "bing". And you will see how you and google are being hypocrite

You may not benefit from the indexing of your link, but you certainly benefit from the indexing of other people's links. Unless, of course, you don't use search on the internet.

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

#112

Post by earl »

Responding to merely two points, one hopes Daniel isn't as stupid as his writing. "This is the company that indexes blogs, newspapers, and both digital and physical books, and then makes all this information available without consent in the contexts of its ads and paid search space, and is dismissal of anyone who objects to Google’s ultra liberal sense of copyright. "

robots.txt and noindex http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...

And "Install the Google Toolbar and do a search of Bing, and Google actually directs your clickstream back for its own analysis"

Google/Matt Cutts have been very open about what they do and don't use that information for, and they aren't using click tracking.

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

#113

Post by spot »

johnjhayes wrote: post #96
jonburs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has shown any evidence that Microsoft has directly copied Google's search index, or even violated the directives in google.com's robots.txt file. What Microsoft apparently has done is to infer relationships from Gooogle SRPs to various sites by way of information gathered through the Bing toolbar (and possibly other documented and user opt-in channels w/in IE). Using toolbar collected signals is well-establish…

The only thing I haven't seen is this. Ok, using the clickstream data is an established practice, but does Google use clickstream data from users making searches on OTHER search engines, or just their own? This is the crux for me, Bing is using data from Google, does Google use data from Bing or only themselves? Even if all true, I don't see it as unethical business practice. Definitely a marketing black eye, but not…

The information flows one way, from Google to Bing.

Google is careful not to do this.

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

#114

Post by jshen »

chawco wrote: post #67
greyman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft do NOT steal Google's search results. They use clickstream data from Bing toolbar users to improve their search results. What happened is that Google engineers engineered a use case, in which signal from those clickstream appear like a stealing of search results. Or in other words, Microsoft uses Google users behaviour in their ranking algorithm. But that's not unethical, and Google is doing the same thing.

My issue with it is this: Had Google not created a better algorithm would those users be clicking on those links? If Google shut down today would Microsoft be able to associate those sites with the search terms? I should think the answer to the above is 'no' in both cases, which is why this is cheating. It's probably not illegal, but I find the practice to be unethical. Ask yourself this: If Google shut down today, w…

Ask yourself this: If Stackoverflow shut down today, would Google be providing more relevant, equally relevant or less relevant results for programming related searches? If the answer is less relevant, then I think it's clear there's been a lapse of ethics.

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

#115

Post by nailer »

anonymous246 wrote: post #97
nailer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So MS are saying Google themselves uploaded the data to MS by using Bing toolbar? Does Google agree their engineers did this?

Dude, I've seen your comments on this thread. Several of them are basically asking people to confirm facts everybody agrees on. You should come better prepared for the next discussion. Sorry to be an ass. But you're wasting my time on this site, since I have to wade through your questions to get to the interesting ones.

There's something most of HN are missing. You are indeed being rude by not letting me point it out:

* Google having the Bing toolbar installed and entering the search into Bing toolbar is one thing (and I'd expect MS to be using the data)

* Google having the Bing tolbar installed and entering the search into the Google hom page is a very different thing (and I'd expect MS to be using the data)

Judging from the moderation in this thread, people seem to think the first happened.

According to Google, it did not. No other source contravenes this.

Sorry if you think me pointing this out is bad. Perhaps your efforts would be better reporting all the non-hacker stories on the front page?

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

#116

Post by nailer »

mikeryan wrote: post #75
nailer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google asked users to click on their bogus results. Got a citation for that?

We asked these engineers to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results, i.e., the results we inserted http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-...

Engineers are generally not considered end users.

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

#117

Post by FreebytesSector »

nlogn wrote: post #98
luigi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the effect is the same as intentional scraping and outright stealing: search results that could have only come from Google are appearing as Bing results. Bing needs to blacklist Google from its clickstream. Simple.

I don't even think they should just blacklist Google. They should just respect robots.txt. edit: I should have clarified. I know that the Bing crawler likely respects robots.txt, but if they are using clickstream info to build their index, it seems right that they should respect robots.txt there as well, no?

I agree with your comments that toolbars should respect the robots.txt because even if a human is doing the crawling, it is still an automated system that is indexing information from that site. I would not want toolbars attempting to send data back to Bing based on my queries on a company Intranet or a site that would normally not be indexed. Personal data entered into what the toolbar thought was a query field could be sent onward as well even if the robots.txt on the site restricted it. I think they should respect robots.txt in this case even if they are only monitoring user behavior.

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

#118

Post by nailer »

Drewjw81 wrote: post #49
nailer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand this. * Are Microsoft saying end users are naturally clicking on nonsense phrases invented by Google? * If not, what are they saying?

What's not to understand? Microsoft is colecting search phrases from searches people make though the IE search box. Then they are tying that data to the next page people click to after the search. Google intentionally polluted their data using odd phrases and asked users to click on their bogus results. Given that the only data bing would have for those strange phrases is polluted crap from Googlers it's not surprisi…

> What's not to understand? Microsoft is colecting search phrases from searches people make though the IE search box.

This is not correct. From Google:

"We asked these engineers to enter the queries into the search box on the Google home page"

Google did not enter the data into the IE search box.

Edit: I see you replied to yourself acknowledging the mistake - please ignore this then!

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

#119

Post by SeanLuke »

ddemchuk wrote: post #93

The world's largest scraper is complaining about being scraped...when Yelp and all the rest of the local businesses directories realized they were being scraped and the data was being used to google's advantage, it doesn't appear that Google gave two shits. Tables have turned, and it's like someone stole the handball from the recess yard.

> when Yelp and all the rest of the local businesses directories realized they were being scraped and the data was being used to google's advantage,

http://yelp.com/robots.txt

Not a mention of GoogleBot.

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

#120

Post by moultano »

evgen wrote: post #108
moultano wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is the one creating the association, not the user. The relationship between term a and page b was created by Google, and confirmed by a user. People don't click on search results that aren't there.

Google is not creating the association. Users are creating the associations, Google is discovering them and presenting them back to other users, and subsequent users are confirming the associations. In this case Google engineers, masquerading as users, created associations, then Google presented those associations back to the user, and Bing noticed the association between the term and the page. The relationship betwe…

Users are creating the associations, Google is discovering them and presenting them back to other users, and subsequent users are confirming the associations.

Going down this road of debate, we'll be getting into the semantics of "inventing" vs. "discovering."

Turning data into ranking is the whole purpose of a search engine, just as turning data into theory is the purpose of science, and turning experience into art is the purpose of art. Essentially here, we're debating whether search ranking is more like science, in which there's a correct answer that you are uncovering, or like art, in which all of the product is subjective.

Having worked in the field for five years, I'd argue that it is far closer to art than science. Google's rankings are its subjective determination, and the courts have agreed that Google's rankings are its constitutionally protected speech.

Though the data may all ultimately come from the human-created internet, the transformation of that data is still important, and subjective. To claim otherwise is to miss the whole point of search technology in the first place.

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