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

Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 79 posts

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#41

Post by kenjackson »

axod wrote: post #40
kenjackson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like how Google copies the titles of web pages and snippets and puts them in search results? Ahh... the innovation is not in the "content", but how the content is determined. Google crawls the web, copying content, creates and index, and a sophisticated formula for determining relevance of search. MS has innovated by taking this one step further by saying, "if you opt-in we'll use your behavior as part of our index a…

With that logic you should definitely work at MS. It'd be a perfect fit.

I agree. I do think it indicates a cultural position, and to the extent that you don't fit culturally you should get a "no hire" to the benefit of both parties.

That is why I disagree that this is harmful to potential employees. I'd no sooner want to work for someone who thought this indicated inferior technology as they'd want me to work with them.

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#42

Post by lallysingh »

roc wrote: post #17
terryjsmith wrote: post #4

Obviously this depends highly on your definition of "copy". They presumably do not scrape Google's answers, but using user behavior patterns targeting search sites (or tracking all user data but analyzing the search segment) and what people clicked is just as bad.

Don't Chrome and the Google Toolbar also track clickstream data to refine search results? I assumed that's what they were asking my permission to phone home with, to 'improve their services'. Do they gentlemanly ignore clickstreams on competitor web sites?

There's what you clicked on, and there's what you typed into a search box, hit enter, and then clicked on. The two are quite different.

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#43

Post by axod »

kenjackson wrote: post #41
axod wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that logic you should definitely work at MS. It'd be a perfect fit.

I agree. I do think it indicates a cultural position, and to the extent that you don't fit culturally you should get a "no hire" to the benefit of both parties. That is why I disagree that this is harmful to potential employees. I'd no sooner want to work for someone who thought this indicated inferior technology as they'd want me to work with them.

Just to address your 'logic' above though:

> "Like how Google copies the titles of web pages and snippets and puts them in search results?"

Google copies parts of web pages to benefit the website. To send traffic to them. It's beneficial to both parties which is opt-out by the webmaster.

How does Google benefit from Bing copying their search results? They don't. How can Google opt-out of Bing doing it? They can't.

Bing copying other search engines results is throwing down the gauntlet and stooping to desperation. It's MS announcing "we are not a technology company" - something I think would put off candidates who want to work at a technology company.

You might find it all morally acceptable, or even impressive. I don't.

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#44

Post by MaysonL »

pg wrote: post #25
contextfree wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

moreover, Clinton's statement was an outright lie, not an evasion. And it didn't seem to hurt his approval ratings. The analogy makes no sense.

Apparently his justification was that he didn't consider what happened to have been "sexual relations," because he hadn't been what one might call an active participant. The far extreme of evasion, certainly, but the narrowness of his definition of "sexual relationships" seems in the same ballpark as the narrowness of Microsoft's definition of "copy."

Also, Clinton is of a generation that grew up with the understanding that gentlemen don't "kiss and tell".

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#45

Post by roc »

lallysingh wrote: post #42
roc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't Chrome and the Google Toolbar also track clickstream data to refine search results? I assumed that's what they were asking my permission to phone home with, to 'improve their services'. Do they gentlemanly ignore clickstreams on competitor web sites?

There's what you clicked on, and there's what you typed into a search box, hit enter, and then clicked on. The two are quite different.

It's wrong to associate the clicktrail to the content of the page the link came from? How in the world can you tune for search if you can't/don't include context?

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#46

Post by mikeryan »

pg wrote: post #23
kenjackson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would potential employees take this negatively? This is exactly the type of thing I'd love to work on. Give me opt-in to your web browsing characteristics, and let me optimize your searches. Opt-in is the key. I'm certainly an odd one here, but I'm more inclined to use the Bing toolbar due to this, although the perf cost is still too high to use any toolbar, IMO. What would be nice is if the browsers had an open…

Because if Bing has to rely on Google Search's solutions to problems it should itself be able to solve, that implies it's inferior technology.

I don't think there are many people out there that don't believe Google's technology is superior.

Personally, as someone who's held MS stock for a while, I kind of find this tactic to be deviously brilliant. For a dog thats been back in the race for a while I'm okay with them leveraging every angle they have to catch up. There's a ton of mindshare to compete with at Google. This seems to be a fairly effective short cut for Microsoft.

I think I'd see things your way more if this were two competing, resource constrained startups. But if its two 800lb gorillas going at it I'm going to have fun watching them trade blows and see how it turns out. Playing "fair" doesn't matter as much to me in this case.

But that's just my perspective - everyone will see this differently I'm sure.

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#47

Post by Joakal »

gst wrote: post #9
bhavin wrote: post #3

I guess that's best possible defense for them at the moment. "We do not copy Google's results (however, we do use them in 'creative' ways!)"

> "We do not copy Google's results (however, we do use them in 'creative' ways!)" What's the difference to what Google does by e.g. using newspaper articles in a "creative" way (by not only showing them in the search results, but by combining them to a new type of newspaper at news.google.com)?

Bing attempts to heavily monetise their ventures. So basically they're taking away potential eyeballs. And Google did run into a similar issue with news.google.com: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gRqFRzuaE...

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#48

Post by kenjackson »

axod wrote: post #43
kenjackson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I do think it indicates a cultural position, and to the extent that you don't fit culturally you should get a "no hire" to the benefit of both parties. That is why I disagree that this is harmful to potential employees. I'd no sooner want to work for someone who thought this indicated inferior technology as they'd want me to work with them.

Just to address your 'logic' above though: > "Like how Google copies the titles of web pages and snippets and puts them in search results?" Google copies parts of web pages to benefit the website. To send traffic to them. It's beneficial to both parties which is opt-out by the webmaster. How does Google benefit from Bing copying their search results? They don't. How can Google opt-out of Bing doing it? They can't. Bi…

Bing isn't copying the Google page. Bing is copying what the user typed in a form. And a link the user clicked. The benefit to the user is improved searches from Bing in the future.

Google can block Bing from crawling the search results, which it does. But Google does NOT OWN what the user typed, nor the URL the user goes to.

If MS is scraping the page that's one thing. But if MS is using information provided by the user that the user has given them permission to use, then it is completely fine.

I find it morally acceptable and impressive.

EDIT: Google could block users that have the Bing toolbar installed from using Google search.

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#49

Post by notahacker »

gst wrote: post #10
jameskilton wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the original claim? Google did a test with completely nonsense words and 100% unrelated search results with those terms. The results showed up on Bing. Whatever Bing is doing, it is using Google's search data. http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-...

I didn't deny that they are using Google's data. But it could be possible that they have some kind of generic approach not specifically targeting Google (or even search engines).

One way of yielding the same effects without even factoring in search inputs would be to assume a probabilistic relationship between the words on an origin page (e.g. a Google search result page, or a bog standard web page) and the destination URL the user clicks through to. This seems like a pretty reasonable design parameter for the Bing Bar to learn "Suggested Sites" and if you're collecting that information anyway why wouldn't you add all those associations into your search engine to help it rank those tricky obscure search queries?

For synthetic words like "hiybbprqag" that rarely/never show up on the internet [except on Google search result pages generated by Google engineers systematically searching for it], the basic probability algorithm would weight heavily towards assuming an association between "hiybbprqag" and the destination URLs viewed by people immediately after looking at pages referencing "hiybbprqag". Since probably the only people looking at pages referencing "hiybbprqag" were Google testers searching for it, who had been instructed to always click on the "synthetic" Google result, the probability of someone viewing a page referencing "hiybbprqag" subsequently going to http://www.teamonetickets....wiltern-map.html* would be close to 1 - suggesting a pretty strong association between the terms.

If you incorporated these associations into the Bing search engine in any way, it would be perfectly reasonable for a search engine to assume that that page is the most relevant result for hiybbprqag*, given the lack of any alternative data on what to show.

Obviously this isn't as simple as the other solution (and Google could have done more sophisticated tests which rule out this kind of algorithm as being behind the results), but the competitive end of search isn't simple.

Re: Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

#50

Post by rfugger »

mikeryan wrote: post #46
pg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if Bing has to rely on Google Search's solutions to problems it should itself be able to solve, that implies it's inferior technology.

I don't think there are many people out there that don't believe Google's technology is superior. Personally, as someone who's held MS stock for a while, I kind of find this tactic to be deviously brilliant. For a dog thats been back in the race for a while I'm okay with them leveraging every angle they have to catch up. There's a ton of mindshare to compete with at Google. This seems to be a fairly effective short c…

Yes, it was clever, until Google caught them at it and started using it to undercut their "mindshare".
Post reply on HN