Google accuses Microsoft Bing of cheating by copying search results

49 Comments

“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,” Danny Sullivan reports for Search Engine Land. “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,” Sullivan reports. “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,” Sullivan reports. “‘I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book,’ Singhal said… ‘It’s cheating to me because we work incredibly hard and have done so for years but they just get there based on our hard work. I don’t know how else to call it but plain and simple cheating. Another analogy is that it’s like running a marathon and carrying someone else on your back, who jumps off just before the finish line.’”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Aw, you don’t like being ripped off by an inferior company, Google? Apple doesn’t either.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dev” for the heads up.]

49 Comments

  7. What ultimately destroys these companies is not outside competition, but internal arrogance and laziness. It’s happening right now to Microsoft, it happened to Apple in the late 80’s and 90’s, and it’s just now beginning to happen to Google. Apple will loose it’s way again too, but hopefully no to the extent that it did in the 90’s. What separates Apple from Google and Microsoft is that Apple innovates and creates, where Google and Microsoft simply copy and steal. Apple embraces it’s core strengths and expands upon them, Google and Microsoft are moving into areas where they have no strength and are simply buying or stealing others work and passing it off as internal innovation.

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  14. So what? Things like that go on in business all the time. For years and years other businesses, instead of having the cost of research and demographic studies, simply put their new business location as close to the closest McDonalds. Let McDonalds do all the expensive heavy lifting. It’s served Burger King quite well.

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