Microsoft copying others is not news at all. There are so many examples of it, some more blatant than others (not to mention many products that are simply rebadged "Microsoft" or get acquired by Microsoft). But the following new accusation suggests that Microsoft is simply ripping off Google not by copying what they do but by literally copying their output, their product, almost verbatim:
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 has come under fire after Google claims that the Microsoft-owned search engine has been plagiarising Google's own search results.
Google has been running a 'sting operation' to try and catch Bing in the act of copying Google's search results and thinks it has succeeded.
Researchers from the University of Washington and Microsoft Research have found that cursor movements and cursor hovers can detect the relevance of a search result and whether a user may abandon the search.
Comments
NotZed
2011-02-02 23:19:35
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 23:27:17
twitter
2011-02-02 23:35:21
David Gerard
2011-02-01 21:16:40
(Bing image search is actually not worse than Google's, but they're both pretty awful.)
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-01 21:39:37
Google 7477 10828 Microsoft Bing 184 295 Yahoo! 84 141
David Gerard
2011-02-01 22:19:02
For me, MS search engines really just aren't worth a second's thought. There's Google and there's ... no-one. That they're an effective usage monopoly is far from ideal, but then you use other search engines and realise how comprehensively they suck. I think approximately no-one actually uses Bing by choice, only if it's their system default.
That said, as I noted, it's worth a try if you're having a troublesome image search, because no-one including Google has cracked the image search problem yet.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-01 22:35:32
David Gerard
2011-02-01 22:43:28
(This applies in general. Wikipedia could really do with competition, as I have posted, but it does have a network effect to support the monopoly.)
But then, people use Google for search because it's actually much better than everyone else. I remember how bad search was before Google. Cuil gave people some insight into how awful search could be, but they're gone now.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-01 23:09:21
David Gerard
2011-02-01 23:20:21
Google does a LOT of stuff, and not much of it is actually winners. But when they win (search, GMail, Android) they win big.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-01 23:46:14
David Gerard
2011-02-02 00:00:26
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 06:47:22
Will
2011-02-02 00:04:35
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 00:22:53
twitter
2011-02-03 00:41:15
On a more serious note, schools taking Gates Foundation donations should carefully consider the ongoing risks of having restricted software on their property. As the nearly ten year old Salon article asks, "does the benefit of school giveaways outweigh the costs paid by schools that are the subject of anti-piracy inquires?" Microsoft's nasty actions against Los Angles, Philadelphia, Birmingham (England), San Jose, were intended to terrorize other school districts. As last year's attack on Internet cafes shows, Microsoft is watching every use and is willing to take every dime they imagine they can. There is no longer an excuse to waste money on non free software from Microsoft or anyone else. BSA raids prove that non free software not only violates your privacy and strips you of your rights, it is in Microsoft's own words, a "legal timebomb" that everyone should clean up. Why bother with Microsoft's cheap copy of KDE 3.5 (aka Windows 7) when you could just download KDE 4 and all the software you want?
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-03 06:18:00
David Gerard
2011-02-02 00:06:19
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 00:24:14
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2011-02-02 00:30:23
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 00:54:20
twitter
2011-02-02 00:27:19
We should not be surprised to learn that Microsoft scrapes Google's results page. Given the similarity of results, no reasonable person could think they don't. For instance, at least five of the eleven first Bing results for "cats" are also on Google. The order has been changed, perhaps in response to people noticing, and Google throws locality results that Bing would never guess unless someone paid them to advertise. If that's not statistically improbable enough for such a mundane and common topic, other recent searches yielded virtually identical results. I imagine Google's proof is better than my informal survey but Microsoft's copy job is so bad that it is clearly visible.
What else can be expected from a company that allegedly got its start dumpster diving the source code to basic?
David Gerard
2011-02-02 01:15:42
twitter
2011-02-02 06:29:49
Microsoft's hypocrisy and arrogance is amazing. While Wikipedians may bask in Microsoft's use of their work, which is the sincerest form of endorsement, I remember previous and ongoing big publisher slams. The makers of the decidedly third rate encyclopedia on a CD, Encarta, like all big publishers would like you to believe that ownership of data is equivalent to verification of data and that a Bing branded Wikipedia is better than the original. Microsoft is happy to use Wikipedia, don't dare share your copy of Encarta or anything else Microsoft owns. While the sociopaths at Microsoft don't see anything wrong with exploiting the work of "competitors" they wish to screw [2], they would have the lawyers going full blast if anyone pulled the same stunt with them. As Bill Gates once put it:
Microsoft people are theives, not because they have made use of Wikipedia or even Google, but because they would own it all if they could. I see a parallel here between Microsoft's use of Google and Wikipedia work while saying nasty things about both and their judicial extortion of free software companies and users. Microsoft's end goal is always ownership and exclusion to create an artificial scarcity so that the company can charge rent on the labor of others. Watch them merge up with broadcasters like NBC and cable companies like Comcast, so that they can put toll booths on everything and turn the world wide web into pay per page, CableTV.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 06:34:55
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 06:40:14
As for Microsoft using Wikipedia content, how is that different from Microsoft's (and Apple's) use of BSD-licensed code to build their programs? They are leeches that want other people to share their stuff for free while they themselves call those who share "pirates" and sometimes sue them, putting those who share in prison.
twitter
2011-02-02 00:41:03
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 06:44:42
twitter
2011-02-02 00:57:40
Shum and Microsoft should be ashamed of spying on people's surfing. PJ rightly pointed out that this was a violation of people's privacy. Microsoft seems to think it's OK to record everything they happen to hear. The English words for that are eavesdropping and wiretapping. Perhaps this is part of Vista's encrypted data stream back to Microsoft. This is a good reason to avoid Windows. Perhaps they make a deal with ISPs. That is why people should use end to end encryption and also outlaw the practice.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 06:43:35
When you use someone else’s service you’re subjected to egregious conditions. I don’t think it’s illegal.
twitter
2011-02-02 23:30:36
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2011-02-02 23:33:05