Bing copying Google results!

[KenSmith]

Wow, this could get ugly. What an embarrassment for Microsoft!
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html

 

[steven s]

If you can't beat them, steal from them.

 

[kforo]

were they really testing things out on IE, with "suggested sites", and a "bing toolbar" installed/enabled?


google came up with these 2 theories/

As we see it, this experiment confirms our suspicion that Bing is using some combination of:

• Internet Explorer 8, which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature
• the Bing Toolbar, which can send data via Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program

so, why didn't they touch upon this, and say what the results were?

You can choose to pause or stop the Suggested Sites feature from sending your web browsing history to Microsoft at any time. You can also delete individual entries from your history at any time. Deleted entries will not be used to provide you suggestions for other websites, although they will be retained by Microsoft for a period of time to help improve our products and services, including this feature. Any websites you visit while InPrivate Browsing is active will not be sent to Microsoft.

did they try turning off suggested sites to see if the same results came up? If they're only using the IE browser.... am I the only one thinking this?

and the bing toolbar

If I choose to participate, can I opt out later?
Yes. For any released product with an option to participate in CEIP, you can choose to start or stop participating at any time.

it just seems like they only told a portion of the story, or didn't talk about not having these things disabled?

 

[Andrew]

I smell a dirty lawsuit coming... this is no bueno Microsoft. However I am forever a windows fan and a security essentials fan all the way. And also a Google fan all the way! Never liked Yahoo or Bing much or any others for that matter.

Google FTW

 

[Digital Doctor]

OMG.
Microsoft is in real trouble.
They have to pay people to use Bing and it's just a recycled Google !
Ouch.

 

[anotheralias]

This was the first I heard about it, but I think they got it exactly right: Why is Google so hypocritical about Bing

Excerpt, bolding is mine:

But no, this is Google claiming to be wronged by the reuse of the information it makes publicly available. The company that says it does no evil and loves freedom of ideas and sharing free and open source software.

This is the company that made its fortune on a business model stolen from Overture, that it later paid off in an out of court settlement with Yahoo. This is the company that appropriated Sun’s Java platform and changed just enough to avoid paying Sun to use its technology in the development of Android. The same firm that then turned Android into an iPhone workalike in order to turn its partnership with Apple into a predatory research session.

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. It generated controversy by driving trucks around the world to take photos of everything, connecting to WiFi base stations as it went to suck up random data it could use.

 

[Digital Doctor]

... over accusations that Bing is using Google’s search results to improve its own. But what’s wrong with that?

Bing is using Google to improve it's search results.
What is wrong with that ?
It's fraud !
If this isn't fraud, it is definitely YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE of Microsoft leveraging the desktop to weasel it's way into other markets.
What Google does or does not index is irrelevant to How Bing Works.
Mr.Roughlydrafted needs to stay on topic.

 

[anotheralias]

I think his main point there was that Google is a big fat hypocrite. Which it is.

It's kind of like when that Wikileaks guy was crying because someone published his private information.

 

[yavuz]

They argue that the system itself could have automatically used Google as it searches other engines as resource. I'm I only the one who believes in that

 

[Kier]

Personally, I think this is rather shameful behavior from Microsoft. The tests appear to show that they are not using Google as a tuner or assistant for their search results, they are simply using Google directly. And that's pretty pathetic for a company with Microsoft's resources.

 

[Shamil]

In whatever searches I'm doing, I just cannot replicate what is being shown; thus, I remain dissatisfied with the complaint. Plaintiff needs to provide reproducible proof.

 

[dutchbb]

M$ get what they deserve. The company had bad ethics from the start.

 

[kforo]

In whatever searches I'm doing, I just cannot replicate what is being shown; thus, I remain dissatisfied with the complaint. Plaintiff needs to provide reproducible proof.

are you using IE's browser with the bing toolbar, and microsoft suggested sites turned on?

the article reads like google did the search on their servers first, - with those 2 items activated, then ran it on bing - which pulled the same results?

 

[Dodgeboard]

I tried to duplicate this with several bogus searches of my own. I couldn't duplicate it. I kept getting different results from Google and Bing. Maybe they've changed something since this mess came to light.

EDIT: Didn't see Shamils post.

 

[Kier]

are you using IE's browser with the bing toolbar, and microsoft suggested sites turned on?

the article reads like google did the search on their servers first, - with those 2 items activated, then ran it on bing - which pulled the same results?

As I understand it, Google seeded nonsense results into their engine, so that a search for khdslfskjhsd returned a single result, which was a link to a donkey sanctuary in Switzerland*, a page which did not contain the search term at all. After a few weeks, a search for the same term on Bing returned the same single result.

A fairly clever and conclusive test, if you ask me.

*That's not the actual search term used, nor the page returned, but that's the principle.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html

 

[Dodgeboard]

ahhh...I see

 

[Jethro]

Opportunity to attack either Microsoft or Google, if only they had managed to get Oracle involved somehow

 

[CroNiX]

Opportunity to attack either Microsoft or Google, if only they had managed to get Oracle involved somehow

Throw Apple in there and you got yourself a party!

 

[Shamil]

are you using IE's browser with the bing toolbar, and microsoft suggested sites turned on?

the article reads like google did the search on their servers first, - with those 2 items activated, then ran it on bing - which pulled the same results?

Tested with that config, and with Safari.

 

[jmurrayhead]

This is complete crap...Microsoft has more than enough resources to come up with their own stuff. What an embarrassment.