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Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
191–200 of 288 posts
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#192Hmmm. 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…
Let's say that Bing sets up a script that sends queries to Google and then records the results. That's clearly copying. I'd question even that hyperbolic interpretation. Let's say that Google sets up a script that sends queries to websites and then record the results and incorporates what links are shown on that site into their search rankings. Is that clearly copying? No, that's just pagerank. If you have a web dire…
> No, that's just pagerank.
This is my first thought as well. Google's pagerank analyzes the link structure of the web as one of the inputs to its search ranking. Apparently, Bing's toolbar analyzes page content coupled with user click behavior as one of the inputs to its search ranking.
These two things don't seem very different to me. Both of them are relying heavily on the value provided to them by tracking and analyzing the behavior of users on the web to drive search results.
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#193"Is it illegal? Is it cheating? Is it unfair?" Who cares? Google already got everything it needed out of this situation: a gigantic PR win, and a morale boost for their own team. Well played.
I'm not sure how gigantic that PR win is, if I had to come to HN to hear about it.
just after i read this i see an articel on this on the frontpage of financial times germany
http://www.ftd.de/it-medien/medien-internet/:suchmaschinen-k...
headline: googles trap for microsoft
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#194Hmmm. 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…
but the link between the obscure query and the click on the page wouldn't have been made without bing knowing the user first searched for the query on google, no? if it were simply boosting page clicks that would be one thing, but how else could rim.com rank 1st for "mbzrxpgjys"?
What the experiment shows is that where no other data is available Bing will use what it has and that Google can successfully seed Bing on the long tail. What it doesn't show is that in typical circumstances Bing is relying on data gathered from Google searches.
Microsoft is collecting the same sort of information on Google queries that it collects on Bing queries and that Google collects on Google queries. All this is happening at the long tail where both companies are most likely using something other than webcrawling to tailor search results - afterall the whole experiment is only possible because Google can seed page rankings at will to link arbitrary terms to specific search results.
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#195> When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home
An interesting side-effect is that Bing has in its logs the home IPs of the Googlers involved in this research (i.e., anyone who searched for "hiybbprqag" in Dec. '10).
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#196TL;DR If Bing can't find it for you, it will google it for you.
Inaccurate. “If certain users have Googled obscure keywords, results may subsequently appear in Bing for that keyword” is all the experiments showed. Bing is NOT fetching Google queries on its own.
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even Matt's allegation is softened by "I believe" here: there appears to be nothing that conclusively indicates Bing is solely targeting Google. For example, the observed behaviour could be a side-effect of a generic algorithm to extract and associate search queries with a user's click stream, which is only a minor variant of what Google itself does with its own toolbar. If the case described above were true, then al…
Associating search queries and click stream behaviour is fine if it's your own search engine. Doing it for someone else's search engine isn't (regardless of who's doing it).
In the hypothetical situation above, it has almost nothing to do with the search engine - it is both the user providing the query and selecting the result: this is the data of value, not which intermediary provided the list of results to select from.
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#198I 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.
Great panel session. One of the best I've seen. I think you made your point, although I think MS did a good job neutralizing it too.
My question for you Matt... is there any way for Google to build a toolbar that effectively does what the Bing toolbar does (or even a joint one?). I jump to use the various search engines because no single search engine is sufficient. But clearly when Google isn't sufficient, you don't get the value of when I go to Bing. And vice-versa (as I don't use the Bing toolbar currently, but that may change now). Or do you feel that with 65% of the market, you don't need this info?
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is this malicious site detection by any chance, or does that use a different mechanism?
Only thing I could find is this: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=57527
and this: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=60422
Re: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
#200Do I have this right?
1. User does a search in a Microsoft toolbar, using Google as his search engine. User is searching for $terms.
2. User gets a results page. User clicks on the entry in the results for $site.
3. Toolbar sends back to Microsoft that the $site was the first result the user chose for $terms.
4. Bing uses this to increase $site's placement in searches for $terms.
An interesting question then would be whether or not Microsoft also "copies" from Bing? That is, if you are using Bing as your search engine, do they still use the fact that you went to $site after searching for $terms to adjust the rankings?