Google's Search Copying Accusation Called 'Silly' 380
itwbennett writes "Google's Bing sting, reported in Slashdot just days ago and subsequently denied by Microsoft, is now being called 'silly' and 'petty' by search industry analysts and execs. The reason: it would be impossible for Microsoft to use the copied results to reverse engineer Google's search algorithms. And in fact it is more likely that Microsoft was conducting competitive research. Charlene Li, founder of technology research and advisory firm Altimeter Group, saw Google's actions as a misguided response to a real threat from a competitor in its core search business. 'Google isn't used to having competition. You look at this incident and you wonder why they are doing this. It feels amateurish in a way, a kind of 'they're not playing fair' attitude,' she said."
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have to copy an algorithm if they are just copying search results. This response is amateur.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, looking at the test next to mine isn't cheating. It's not like I could reverse-engineer the other students algorithm by looking at his test!
Its a copy, not code (Score:3)
Now the Professor has called you out and you fail.
Re: (Score:3)
What Google did was equitable to click fraud.
You mean equivalent. Don't try to use big words if you don't know what they mean.
Ah HA! He caught you copying his post. His use of equitable was simply a honeypot to lure you into exposing yourself (ew, not in that way).
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
Like it says they do in their EULA? Like the same thing the Google toolbar does?
The original Google press release tries to spin this as if MS is stealing info from Google. The reality is all they are doing with the Bing bar is monitoring search clickthrough. Google is evil, has been since shortly after IPO, and one day the fanbois will notice, and will jump ship to whatever the next new thing is.
Re: (Score:3)
I wrote this last time. The concept that Microsoft users have granted informed consent is overrated. What they've mostly granted is consent through rational ignorance, because Microsoft controls the process by which consent is granted. A more efficient way for users to assert their moral sentiments would not result in nearly so much "permission".
Example of an efficient mechanism: a user permission policy configuration which conveys appropriate sentiments to all installed and online applications, without
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I also agree - Bing is cheating. Never mind Google, they're second-sourcing ~everyone's~ results without giving them credit.
Every search engine has its own search methods and data-parsing algorithms (down to the lowest in-site-search php code), and it is these algorithms that provide the 'top results' that bing toolbar (and/or IE) users are clicking on. Never mind the Bing toolbar user; what if the owner/creator of a search engine doesn't want any data generated by it to be sent to Bing - where does ~he~ opt out of MS' data-sculling program?
Bing's tactics are distasteful for many reasons, but mainly a) because they exploit (toolbar) users to scull data from competitors and b) because Bing uses this data to provide 'top results' that it obviously values above those provided by its own algorithm. This is borderline - if not outright - industrial espionage.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
A pure marketing lead response is 100% right. The funniest thing was that the attempt to claim click fraud [businessinsider.com]. If we remember click fraud is where a site owner tries to get advertising revenue by making fraudulent clicks. I don't see how Google manages to get advertising revenue from Bing. This just seems to be a case of when you get caught start slinging as much mud around randomly as you can and hope people don't notice.
In case people haven't noticed; what Google has discovered means that if you have private information leaked somewhere (e.g. a password in an SQL query) this means that bing is now pushing that straight from your browser (where it should normally be safe) onto the web. I'm surprised nobody has managed to find a bunch of interesting secret information in bing based on this. There must be some way to get it out. A good chance would be looking for unique keys in URLs or web pages and then feeding them into Bing.
This just looks so obviously terribly wrong that you can see that Microsoft really doesn't have a clue about search. No wonder they have to copy.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding. I'm used to nonsense from "industry analysts", but this takes the cake. It's a complete non-sequitur. This never was a question of reverse-engineering. It's a question of straight-up ripping off results.
On a related note, what's with all the Google-bashing recently? First the idea (which has now turned into a meme) that Google's search result are not the gold standard for search anymore, and now the idea (probably soon to be turned into a meme) that Google can't handle competition and is resorting to FUD?
Yes, Google is no saint, it's not perfect. No shit, Sherlock. But if all I did was read "industry analysts" and various websites, I'd think that Google was about to fall apart, what with search sucking and all other products completely falling flat on their face. There's either a general search for the same story going on (Look Ma! I broke the news of Google sucking first!), or some grade A bullshitting is taking place.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
What's worse is that Microsoft is a client of Altimeter Group:
http://www.altimetergroup.com/disclosure [altimetergroup.com]
Sorry Slashdot, maybe before pushing a story to front page you do a bit of research. The story was submitted by IDG (itwbennett), one of the biggest Microsoft shills on the net. This is all getting out of hand, Microsoft is in damage control and just pushing this FUD about to ensure that faithful Bingsheep keep thinking it's "the best search provider".
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to reply to myself, but I just checked out Charlene's Twitter feed.
http://twitter.com/#!/charleneli [twitter.com]
Can we say Microsoft shill?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
With tweets like "At Microsoft Productivity Council mtg on future of Office" and worse "Ribbon Hero which teaches how to use MSFT Office better. Making work (gasp!) fun", Charlene Li is obviously blatently dishonest in her representation of her position.
"Charlene Li, founder of technology research and advisory firm Altimeter Group" - and as sortius_nod says, now paid shill.
Phillip.
Google weight for "microsoft shill" (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty much why I said they were a shill. LinuxWorld hasn't been good for years, neither has MacWorld, and JavaWorld, was that any good ever?
Re: (Score:2)
I've only ever noticed search getting better.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
On a related note, what's with all the Google-bashing recently?
I've seen some of it followed up on Grocklaw. As usual, it seems to trace back to Microsoft astro-turfers and lobby groups of various kinds. Microsoft seems to be pushing for some anti-Google anti-trust lawsuits, probably as a pre-emptive move to make any Google anti-trust moves more difficult during the various anti-patent lawsuits.
Re: (Score:2)
This is very typical crap from Timothy. He always posting articles on how Google can do nothing right, Android is horrible and I how I want to have Steve Jobs' iBabies.
Who doesn't want to have Steve Jobs iBabies? (grin)
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem, of course, being copyright, and claiming work as their own.
Google create a false entry, accessible only through their own site. This is a work that is intended only to determine whether someone is actually stealing their results (i.e. taking those results, and passing them off as MS's own).
By all means, index non-search sites. That's what search engines are for, but you can't possibly convince me that Microsoft didn't know they were looking at Google's search results.
That really is akin to writing a dictionary by seeing what people read, then saying "Well, lots of people read this other dictionary, so I'll just lift entries verbatim from it, and claim they are my own"..
Yes, search engine tweaking is a very fine art.. It's easy to pick up the wrong signal by mistake. if MS had confessed, and said "Ooops, programming/design error in our browser, this is how it happened, and we're now going to remove all search engine sites from our allowed input", weight of opinion may have been behind them more, rather than blithely saying "It's all Google's fault we're ripping them off".
The root of this is that they're building a dictionary by directly reading a competing dictionary. This isn't creating a diverse, resilient ecosystem. It's parasitism.
Everyone screws up, and things always go wrong. That's a fact of life. What isn't a fact is that strange need to point fingers and say "It's everyone else's fault but mine". Especially when it blatantly is your fault.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you kidding? (Score:3)
If they were using the data to create a Satnav product, yes. Otherwise, no. There's a pretty obvious difference between having a correlation between your data and someone else's data, and having an exact duplicate of a direct competitor's data in your competing product.
Re: (Score:3)
Let me make your example more specific, so that it actually maps 1:1.
Market research company then uses your travels and start-end queries to publish its own map and navigation, where results are compiled straight from the travels you took while using someone else's map program.
I can't believe this is so difficult to understand. Seems to me that people are clearly lacking some ethics here.
Re: (Score:3)
If they were supplementing GPS direction systems with the routes you took, quite possibly.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, as I understand it, clickstream data points are only a small part of the equation. Notice how Google could only reproduce this by using totally bogus keywords, ensuring that the data they fed to Bing through the toolbar were the only data points being considered for those keywords?
Bing tracks when users search for something, and what sites they visit as a result. I'd almost be offended intellectually if this was not part of their game to provide me with better search results.
Disclaimer: I use Google almost exclusively. Bing can suck it, but this debate is ridiculously biased.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem, of course, being copyright, and claiming work as their own.
Google create a false entry, accessible only through their own site.
Bzzzzzt. Wrong. They created a public "honeypot" page available to everyone. Then they created a bogus search term and manipulated their own system to list the honeypot page for that search term. *Then* they volunteered into Bing toolbar and Suggested Sites, searched for the term and clicked the link.
Bing toolbar - doing what "toolbars" do - reported back the clickstream. The search term appears readily available in the url of the first page, and the user quickly clicks on a link on that page. Bing's feedback analyzer creates a (very weak) relation between search terms from url of page 1 to page 2. What google did was game this system so that there were no other signals. Consequently it received relatively more weight. But it is not like Bind crawled Google or anything like that, which Google would like everyone to believe.
Re: (Score:3)
But they did. Instead of using a program to do the clicking, they used humans.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm beginning think this debacle is a load of nonsense, having read a few posts, it looks like the engineer in everyone has turned off for the week.
This is not an engineering question, it's an ethics question. At least it's clear why you're lost.
Re: (Score:3)
So the Bing toolbar analysed those clicks, and because no-one else in the world was clicking on a link with those terms, they went straight to the top of Bing's results.
So, Microsoft aren't data-mining Google
Theyre getting data-- basically, ALL relevant data on a search-- from google, and slapping it straight into their search results. How is that NOT datamining? What definition of datamining do you use?
Further, this ignores the fact that most dell machines ive seen shipped in the last year and half come with IE8 preloaded with the bing bar already installed. "Explicit consent" in this case means "user frantically clicked whatever they could to get the 80 IE8 startup prompts to go away". Explicit consent my
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The key word is 'toolbar' - collecting anonymous (or sometimes not!) clickstream data is what browser toolbars *do*; it's their reason for existence, and being bundled with filesharing clients, and our having to clean them off the PCs of newb relatives who can't get enough Free Screensavers </rant>.
So, Bing's toolbar is using live human intelligence to supplement its search algorithm
Re: (Score:3)
Except, it all they were doing is what you say, the "Bing Sting" would not have worked. They have to be doing more than simply monitoring what people click on. No amount of click analysis would cause pages THAT DON'T CONTAIN THOSE TERMS AND ARE NEVER LINKED TO BY ANYTHING CONTAINING THOSE TERMS to rise to the top of anyone's search results for those terms. Google did not insert search results that returns an "unlikely" match, they returned an impossible match.
Erhm. Google search terms are available in the URL of the results page. Bing toolbar sees page 1 with a number of words in the URL. Bing toolbar sees that user quickly navigates to another page, page2. Bing analyzer infers a (very weak) relation between terms from page 1 to page 2.
Not impossible at all. In fact, very, very probable.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't believe the number of clueless comments in this thread. Do you still not know what the original story was about? People who have opted to send information to microsoft used google (and various other search engines) to search for something. The Bing toolbar, or whatever was collecting the information, noted that person X searched for term Y, and eventually ended up at page Z. It makes perfect sense to connect Y and Z, regardless of the search engine used, or even if they asked a friend to point them
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Google manually manipulated their search results - something they claim never to do.
Let's examine what exact harm they did. Google ensured that the search results the manipulated would never be returned to many people. They had the manipulation designed to switch off automatically if this happend. They then had their own search engineers search. So the only people "harmed" by the manipulation were Google engineers who already knew about the test.
Clearly, this is a stupid claim. Why would anyone want to make it? Well, because Microsoft manipulates their own search results, so they w
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I know this is /., but seriously your comment is clueless. This is not what happened at all.
You can read a good follow-up by the guy who broke the story initially: http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279 [searchengineland.com]. This guy has second-thoughts and several goof insights. Basically what this boils down to is Google engineers being incompetent in their analysis and blinded by their beliefs that their work was being stolen.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
Methinks you are the clueless one here. The important part is indeed that Bing is essentially using Google results to boost its own accuracy. It doesn't matter that it comes through a user clicking on the first result of a Google search and opting to send that action to Microsoft. It wouldn't matter if MS had a bot directly scraping results from Google or had gremlins pick through the algorithm to send results via ESP. Microsoft deliberately and knowingly incorporated Google results into its own results, but without acknowledging this fact anywhere. That is the definition of plagiarism, and ultimately, cheating.
If that's not the ultimate admission of "We don't know what the fuck we're doing, and have resorted to copying other people's results", I don't know what is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I'll bet if you did the same thing with Bing, but just clicked on lower links on the search results page, those search results would be pushed up closer to the top. They aren't copying algorithms. They are saying "hey, this guy was looking for a page about horses, and then they went to this page. We should promote that result." It's smart. MS is allowed to be innovative. You don't have to have a fit when they get things right.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody ever said that they were copying the algorithm. The value is in the results. This is basically monte carlo results scraping, with a pleasant bias towards more popular searches (selection bias for bing toolbar users, too).
It's clever, but they are *definitely* copying off of Google's test. The stupid thing about this is that it makes Bing results *more* like Google's, giving me no differentiating reason to use Bing.
Lame, embarassing, fragile, and really poorly responded to. Microsoft fail, 100%.
Re: (Score:3)
The point is that the users typed those search queries into Google
No they didn't. They types them into the bing toolbars searchbox, which then uses whatever search engine is configured.
Why are making arguments when your beginning premise is demonstrably wrong?
Re: (Score:3)
That's a weak argument. It's like that story about Alison Chang and Virgin Mobile [nytimes.com]. Just be
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you totally missed the point.
User A types some words into a text box, then clicks on a link that takes it to a different domain. Toolbar B records those words, together with the destination URL of that link that was clicked, and uses those words to slightly bias the results of search engine C.
Toolbar B does this for every website that user A visits with the express permission of user A.
The owners of search engine D get annoyed, because when they deliberately insert completely unique [text string -> URL] mappings to their search engine, and have their engineers click on those links, it shows up in search engine C.
Note that the only reason search engine D were aware of this in the first place is because bizarre mis-spellings of words in their search engine later turned up in search engine C.
So, there is a logical way to connect page 3 with content X - someone at some point entered X into a text box, then clicked on a link that lead to page 3. In this case it was some Google engineers. The issue here is that Google (along with a lot of Slashdot posters) are thinking of the web in a static sense: 'how could X possibly link to page 3??' - Bing stole that data. Microsoft are dynamically looking at what users do, and the text string -> URL -> click interaction is seen as a relationship between a phrase and a page that they want to take into account with their search results.
Re: (Score:3)
They are going to get search results.
No, you err. Bing (via Bing toolbar) are going to get click streams. They were not indexing the results page. They monitor url parameters (among other parameters) and subsequent navigation. Hence "click stream". This makes a connection between a term (in a URL parameter) and a page. That page was chosen by a *user*, not by parsing the Google results page. This is what toolbars do, Bing, Google etc. are all doing it for all sites. Bing has simply not made an exception for Google.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't have to copy an algorithm if they are just copying search results. This response is amateur.
You can certainly make the case that Google setting up the "sting" operation was "silly", or "petty", but Microsoft's response to the whole thing has been quite enlightening. I think it's Microsoft that's got issues with having a real competitor, and it shows. Google's kinda just rubbing salt into the wounds, which isn't very professional, but MS needs to respond better. Trying to deny it, and at the same time accuse Google of committing "click fraud" to setup the sting (something which has a very specific meaning [wikipedia.org] that's mostly criminal and has not a damn thing to do with Google's "sting" operation) comes across as... desperate at best.
Personally I think the whole thing is silly on both sides, but MS's response has done a lot to wipe out the little bit of trust they'd gained in past years for behaving somewhat better. MS's response, and not the whole "sting", is making me even less likely to use Bing in the future as well. Both of these are outcomes I suspect MS didn't want to cause with their reaction. In a nutshell, Google won this little fight when MS started responding with denials and attempts to make Google look like they'd done criminal stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly! Robbers don't steal jewels and cash to get specimens to duplicate, they just steal.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They are *not* taking Google's search results. They are looking at what surfers search for, and then at what pages they end up on. I'd wager that they don't even look at the search results page, just what page the user ends up at.
Re: (Score:2)
Congratulations, you've concluded that they don't copy from Google specifically, but from other search engines in general. Now how is this better?
Re: (Score:3)
It is obivous, even from reading Google's details of the allegated copying that Microsoft is copying search results.
It is only obvious if you choose to close your eyes. Go read http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279 [searchengineland.com]. This is by the guy who *originally broke* the story. And he is backpedaling and having second thoughts. Google manipulated him, but now he thinks they didn't really mean to. Google engineers were just incompetent?
Pot Calling the Kettle Black (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a case of Pot Calling the Kettle Black (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're confused on the point of "attack".
For example, I can post a link to this page [cnet.com]. Google can now see the page. Of course, it could get to that page from within shopper.cnet.com, anyway, but the robots.txt file or NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW tags may be warning it off. (So Google has to walk the URL back up to http://shopper.cnet.com/robots.txt [cnet.com], to make sure, and it may not see http://www.shopper.com/robots.txt [shopper.com], by the way.)
More to the point, I can post a link to this page [cnet.com] of a search result on shopper.com. Then Google can see that search. And, in an hour or two, it might show up in a google search of "wall wart servers", which would be useless, but anyway.
I can post a link to this query [cnet.com], however, and, not only might Google's spider collect it (from here), but it might not even have to get it from here. I'm probably not the first person to search shopper.com for "Small office home office server".
I can't see there being an ethical issue here, because those links feed people to shopper.com. In fact, cnet likely has some agreements with Google on that. And many such search sites (well, smaller ones) deliberately use Google's search engines to save themselves a bit of infrastructure cost.
Google, on the other hand, may prefer not to put some of those small search sites results on their general search pages, but that's a side issue.
Now, how do you suppose that bing picks up a query like, "m4-7734-6al 63363r [google.com]"? Unless someone posts that (like I just did), how does bing get that query just from my using it in a Google search a few minutes ago?
To say this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, you'd be accusing google of planting code in Chrome that watches for bing search results and feeds them back to google's search engine optimizer on the sly. (A new way for a browser to call home!) And/or of making deals with the Mozilla team. But the evidence you mention doesn't really support that, as someone else points out.
"Competitive Research" (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see this phrase going down well in any other industry. If you copy a map or a book or the design for a car from a different company in the same field, you wouldn't get out of it by calling it "competitive research". Microsoft doesn't need to reverse engineer google's algorithm if they can just steal their results directly; in fact, it's simpler this way because it cuts out the middle part where they even bother to figure out how it works.
Re:"Competitive Research" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, and their search dev team was "informed" by google's linking of "mbzrxpgjys" to Research in Motion", were they? I wonder what algorithm revisions lead to Bing making the exact same link?
I think that the word is "Plaiarism" (Score:3)
I think that the wikipedia definition pretty much says it. If Bing had put their purloined searches up as "Google top result", with a convenient link back to the Google page they scraped the result from -- then there'd be not be much to snark about. The pr
Re: (Score:3)
I'd say you care because if you don't care Microsoft's tactic here might work.
Presuming you're interested in getting better search results, lets assume for a moment Microsoft had not gotten caught.
Microsoft's results benefit from both their research, and Googles, not matter how little research they put into it - since we've premised this on their never getting caught, eventually Bing becomes the dominant engine, despite Googles desperate efforts to create a better search engine.
Then Google dies . . . and Bi
Re: (Score:3)
It worked, though. (Score:5, Interesting)
It worked, though. It diverted attention from Microsoft's accusation that Google profits from search spam.
Are popular searches also copied? (Score:2)
If its just the click result for some weird search words then I would say Microsoft was being very clever.
If Microsoft is exclusively using Google's click-through data for the all the popular search words then Microsoft is cheating.
Feel sorry for microsoft (Score:2)
That poor little upstart is struggling with all that competition that google does not have
Reverse engineer? (Score:3)
allow me to cherry pick quotes. (Score:4, Informative)
I read the article and it just seemed like a bunch of collated sound bites with all the intelligence of a 14 year old who thinks she wins arguments by being the first to call the other a hater.
Re: (Score:3)
p.s. I'm aware that comparing them to a 14 year old is probably just as much an ad hominem as a 14 year old who likes to call people haters.
Microsoft is responding with misdirection (Score:5, Interesting)
They seem to be dancing around the core charge of copying what were nonsensical search results that, if not copied from Google, should not have returned any results. They also seem to be attempting to misdirect in talking about "copying Google's algorithm", when I believe the charge is specifically about copying search results.
I did note that the "Altimeter Group" has only been around a couple years - and has a very website that is full of vague social media-related buzzwords without indicating what, exactly, is their actual skillset (if anything).
misdirection indeed (Score:2)
Summary:
google > We made up results, and you had the very same results. You wouldn't have the same results unless you copied.
microsoft > We are not copying because that wouldn't make sense. Google feels blahblah, Google is blahblah
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft is responding with misdirection (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhm, how would that work, exactly?
Let's say you have a search engine toolbar that looks over a user's shoulder to see what webpages they go to. Presumably, the links that leave those web pages carry information on said user's interests (eg if the user reads slashdot, then the links point to things like other people's comments, and also the site which carries TFA, etc). So the text of that page and the links would be automatically connected by the search engine.
Now if a user goes on a webpage that happens to be a google results webpage, then the links on that webpage will be search results. If one user types in a weird query, then the toolbar will think that user likes those kinds of weird queries, and maybe that other people would like those, too.
So when another user now types exactly the same query to prove the "sting", then the search engine will think it has found another user who likes weird queries, no? So it should show the connections it has learned from the previous webpage.
Re: (Score:2)
In addition, if this were not a major signal in their ranking, they'd likely stop using it to get away from the controversy. The fact that they're trying to dance around the issue rather than removing the signal proves that a major source of their search relevancy is Google search results.
And yet only a fraction of Google's injected terms made it into Bing's results. If it were such a major part, all of them would have. All this does is show that given sparse information from other indicators, and a very strong indication from customer feedback, Bing will take into account customer feedback.
Re: (Score:2)
There, fixed that for you. Honest professor, I didn't cheat. I only used my neighbour's answers when I couldn't figure it out on my own.
Someone is fudging the facts here! (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare the quote from the linked piece:
Google's charge that Microsoft copied its search results is much ado about nothing, some industry insiders say...
(emphasis mine).
To this one by the Slashdot editor:
"Google's Bing sting, reported in Slashdot just days ago and subsequently denied by Microsoft, is now being called 'silly' and 'petty' by search industry analysts and execs
To a seasoned tech reader like me, these two statements mean different things. I can get industry analysts who can support Google's position. Time will tell. Surely Slashdot can do better.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly an unbiased voice in this discussion (Score:5, Informative)
Hey it's not like Microsoft is a client of the "Altimeter Group" and Google is not.
http://www.altimetergroup.com/disclosure [altimetergroup.com]
Oh? It's exactly like that?
Look. Nobody thinks that Microsoft is "trying to reverse engineer their algorithm" from search results, but what they are apparently doing is harvesting user data from clicks. It appears that when a user searches from something, and clicks a link as a result of that search, the search term and site that the user found relevant is collected and used in their own search algorithm -- so they are, to some degree, piggybacking on Google here.
On the one hand, its good to know what link your user found relevant -- that's important data for your own search engine to have, on the other hand that's really the sort of thing you should be gathering from your own damn search engine. I'm sure that by now, enough people are using Bing that they can get this data on their own. The only thing getting it through the browser instead of through bing allows them to do is gather it from Google users as well, which is essentially allowing them to tune their own algotrithm on the back of Google's.
It's shady to say the least. Perhaps it was created with good intent -- as discovery tool for when users are on websites with internal search engines, but its obviously pulling in a lot more than that. If Microsoft continues to abuse that, they deserve any bad publicity they get as a result.
Mod Parent Post UP! (Score:2)
Microsoft is a client of Altimeter, they are protecting their revenue stream ...
Re: (Score:3)
Web spiders aren't human. Think about how many millions of web pages have free local search powered by Google, maybe reformatted in a site specific way? Think about how many web pages are cached copies, may
Re: (Score:3)
It appears that when a user searches from something, and clicks a link as a result of that search, the search term and site that the user found relevant is collected and used in their own search algorithm -- so they are, to some degree, piggybacking on Google here.
Actually, no. It appears that all the information Bing receives is the GET request on the link, not any of the content of Google's page (otherwise it would have got the corrected spelling and links other than the one Google paid users to click on). And that GET request is the same information that the visited site gets, so it has never been secret to Google. The Referer HTTP header contains the reffering URL which includes the user's (and I stress user's, ie not Google's) search query. And millions of s
Re: (Score:3)
That would be even worse, then, because the referrer URL contains the search term differently in each search engine -- which would mean that Microsoft would have had to explicitly code it to strip search terms from Google search URLs, rather than simply having the browser watch what people type into *any* search field
Wholly incorrect, and shows you really don't know what you are talking about. Here's a URL from Google search:
www.google.com.au/search?q=swine+flu
And here's one from Bing search:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=foo [bing.com]
They both have the search query in the URL argument "q".
And here's Ask.com:
http://www.ask.com/web?q=foo&search=&qsrc [ask.com]
Still has the search query in the "q" argument, and the word "search" in the URL...
I could keep going if you like, but I think I've embarrassed you enough....
Could Google do the same thing with Analytics? Yes, but they aren't.
Says whom? They're
Follow up from Danny Sullivan who broke the story (Score:2, Informative)
http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279
Re: (Score:3)
Basically Microsoft's defense is now: "We're copying every search engine, not just google."
It really doesn't justify anything.
Is normal "competitive research" published? (Score:3)
Since in Google's test the eventual outcome was plain to see for anyone that used the specific keywords they tested around, how is that "competitive research" on the part of Bing?
Competitive research is what Google does - check every now and then on how accurate Bing's results are to what Google is seeing. It doesn't alter what Google users see, it just tells Google how the competition is doing.
Bing's actions seem the opposite of "research" to me, because they are by design not actually examined by anyone at Bing, only by the customers! In the recent unveiling we see Bing acting as a routing engine to feed some Google results back through Bing. That is not research.
I can't imagine anyone calling the act of pointing this out petty - it casts into doubt any result you get on Bing, as far as input being from Bing matching algorithms or Google's. Even if Bing's algorithms are really good, we'll never know - and that's the most unfortunate thing about this whole situation, as it has tainted the work at Bing regardless of how good it actually is.
Thus the whole thing is not petty, it is in fact very sad for a number of undoubtedly quite smart computer scientists that will forever have this cloud overhead.
Not playing fair (Score:2)
Goatse anyone? (Score:2, Funny)
I agree that it's silly (Score:2)
Google can prevent Bing from scraping their data if they want to. Instead they allow it so they can "sting" them. Ridiculous.
Re: (Score:2)
I think this article says everything... (Score:5, Informative)
I think this article says everything that needs to be said on the issue:
http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279 [searchengineland.com]
Essentially Bing's defense (as outlined in the article) goes like this:
Re:I think this article says everything... (Score:4, Insightful)
“We’re not copying but watching users,” Shum said.
Weitz added, “The word ‘copy’ has a very specific connotation, and it’s wrong. We get the clickstream. We’re going to see it. We may choose to show it or not.”
It doesn't matter if you call it watching instead of copying. It's still copying. Bing shouldn't be "watching" google's results, or "copying" the user's click behavior. That's like google's trade secrets. An analogy would be an online newspaper who copies articles verbatim from a competitor, and then justifying it by saying, "We didn't copy the article, we just monitored the user's eyestream and discovered this article. But it's ok because we copy everybody's articles."
From your link: "Bing can also examine how people click on its own results that it lists in response to that search." No shit? It's like it's listed as an afterthought. Of course Bing should be paying attention to their own clicks... and not scraping their competitor's data. But instead, they're trying to justify it using PR words, and creating a convoluted argument that they are merely, "showing the surfstream" rather than "creating a reproduction of an original work", i.e. copying.
It would be like a dating site copying a fake profile from a competitor. "We didn't copy that profile, we're just showing the datestream."
Re: (Score:3)
On top of that, after he claims Google plays such a minor role as they monitor every move on every site the user makes, when asked why not exclude Google to shut them up he basically admits it wouldn't work any more without Google. Seems pretty contradictory.
Phillip.
bullshit like this (Score:2)
Bulllshit like this is how databases, and other mere collections of information, will become copyrightable. Whoever wins, we'll lose.
Competition? (Score:2)
Google's actions as a misguided response to a real threat from a competitor in its core search business.
If a 'real threat' to Google's search business has to use Google to improve their results, I don't think Google will have anything to worry about from a competitor that will always be a few steps behind.
So is this an involutary sting operation? (Score:2)
Because it clearly outs analysts who get their marching orders from Redmond.
Re: (Score:2)
who is paying these so called "search industry analysts and execs".
Microsoft apparently.. ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
However Sir Isaac Newton wasn't trying to use his elevated vantage point to kick in the face of said giants.
Re: (Score:2)
However Sir Isaac Newton wasn't trying to use his elevated vantage point to kick in the face of said giants.
You might want to look up the history of Newton and Leibnitz [wikipedia.org] who (almost certainly) independently invented calculus and used each other's work for some points of development. I think the only reason Newton left most of those giants alone was that they weren't in competition with him.