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Google sets up a sting against Bing

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Josh:
Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this.

As a result of the apparent monitoring, Bing’s relevancy is potentially improving (or getting worse) on the back of Google’s own work. Google likens it to the digital equivalent of Bing leaning over during an exam and copying off of Google’s test.

“I’ve spent my career in pursuit of a good search engine,” says Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow who oversees the search engine’s ranking algorithm. “I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book.”

Bing doesn’t deny Google’s claim. Indeed, the statement that Stefan Weitz, director of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, emailed me yesterday as I worked on this article seems to confirm the allegation:

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Source

Renegade:
Hahahaha~! It'll be funny to see what comes out of it all.

JavaJones:
Wow, that's *really* interesting. Not exactly sportsmanlike of Microsoft, but somehow I doubt that's outright illegal. The info is out there in public view. On the other hand didn't the guy who data mined public Facebook info face some kind of legal repercussions? That too is public data...

- Oshyan

Renegade:
Wow, that's *really* interesting. Not exactly sportsmanlike of Microsoft, but somehow I doubt that's outright illegal. The info is out there in public view. On the other hand didn't the guy who data mined public Facebook info face some kind of legal repercussions? That too is public data...
-JavaJones (February 01, 2011, 03:29 PM)
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One of the funny things I find is that if Google is accusing MS of this... How do they know? Hmmm... They're both playing the same game. They're both watching each other. So it's like the pot calling the kettle black.

The copying part is another question --- and I wouldn't expect Google to admit that they did it if they did. No reason to suspect them either though. It does seem lame on MS's part.

I've had competitors copy me, but I never cried about it.

JavaJones:
What are you talking about? Did you read the article? Google setup a test explicitly to see if Bing was doing this and got pretty conclusive evidence they were. Now if Google was doing the same thing, why would they call out Bing on it? They'd have a huge risk of having it fly back in their faces if Bing could prove the same thing in reverse. "Watching" is another matter; of course Google and Microsoft watch what each other are doing, but there's a big difference between that and outright copying *results* without actually figuring out algorithmically how to generate the correct (or similar) results.

- Oshyan

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