11.18.09

Microsoft’s Search Endeavours: Resorting to Bribery, Deception, and Intimidation

Posted in Google, Microsoft, Search, Security at 5:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: More information about Microsoft’s tactics against Google, including some of the least ethical new decisions (mostly input from readers)

EVERYONE knows by now that Microsoft’s renamed search engine did not live up to the promise. What Microsoft did with “Bing” is similar to what it did with Vista 7. It’s a case of renaming/rebranding/rebadging and marketing that’s rather obscene.

Yesterday we wrote about subversive new tactics that won't work and there is more about it in The Register, which labels it “bribery”.

Mark Cuban counsels Google-busting bribery

[...]

Broadcast.com co-founder and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s idea is simplicity itself: Just pay the top 1,000 websites a million bucks per to de-list themselves from Google.

The fact that Microsoft eventually goes in a similar direction (conspiring with newspapers) shows what a bunch of gangster-like minds still run the company. “It seems to be confirmed now that Microsoft is conspiring with publishers to exclude Google,” quotes one of our readers, then adding: “Is there a new meme being promoted on the Internet? Dump Google – move to Bing. Who would be behind planting such stories?”

“The fact that Microsoft eventually goes in a similar direction (conspiring with newspapers) shows what a bunch of gangster-like minds still run the company.”Well, we have evidence to show that Microsoft "plants" stories, by its own admission. From Slashdot we have this summary: “Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a plan to kill Google by paying the top 1,000 sites a cool million each to leave the Google index and move to Microsoft.”

“Yet more ‘let’s kill Google’ stories,” shows our reader, but comments are not even allowed in The Register.

Adding to this web of dirty tricks, again we see Microsoft sites using US-only figures to sell people lies and deception and take their eyes off the collective truth.

The October comScore numbers are in and Microsoft has inched upward for another month with its Bing search engine.

comScore is actually a close partner of Microsoft, with whom is shares data, but Mary Jo Foley does not disclose this. Bloggers and reporters who do no work whatsoever actually asking themselves questions and properly investigating are not terribly helpful. We wrote about the subject in:

“How to hack Bing CashBack,” shares our reader, who caught up with the news about a flaw we wrote about before. It’s another fine example of negligence and improper response [1, 2]. In relation to this same article, here an opinion expressed yesterday:

Subject: Microsoft’s typical security quality turns Bing into ka-ching …
From: Richard Rasker <spamtrap@linetec.nl> (Linetec)
Date: Tuesday 17 Nov 2009 21:42:06
Groups: comp.os.linux.advocacy

… and results in Microsoft’s typical reaction in cases like this: set a pack of lawyers on the person who discovered the loophole:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/11/bing-loophole

“It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to take on Google, but Microsoft’s Bing search engine was facing embarrassment today, after it emerged that a security loophole could allow users to skim huge sums of money from the system without its knowledge.
…
a technical flaw in the system was discovered by US entrepreneur Samir Meghani, the co-founder of price comparison website Bountii, who found that the way Bing cashback works means that a small piece of computer code could result in huge sums of money being credited to somebody’s account.
…
Meghani said that he received a letter from the company’s lawyers asking him to take down his post on the subject – or face the consequences.”

Ah well, that’ll teach ‘em, trying to bribe people into using their insecure rubbish

Richard Rasker