Google is blasting rival Microsoft for copying its search engine results for use on Microsoft’s search service, Bing. Microsoft claims they did nothing wrong and that Google engaged in “a spy-novelesque stunt.”
I always like a good media stunt and have been accused of committing a few myself by none other than the Internet giant. Welcome to the club, Googlers.
Seriously, though, Google’s protestations are the height of hypocrisy. The company’s entire business model is built on using other people’s content, usually without bothering to ask permission whether it be your emails, journalists’ work or digitized books, to turn a buck. And a very profitable business it has been.
Dig back in history and you’ll recall that Google’s method of monetizing search came from a company called Overture. They thought they’d been robbed and filed suit. Yahoo acquired Overture and Google ultimately settled the claim out of court.
I don’t see how Google executives can possibly keep a straight face and claim to be upset about somebody copying them. Copying is in Google’s DNA.
I’m no fan of Microsoft, but it strikes me that they were doing nothing different than any other Silicon Valley company: analyzing a competitor’s product and then using what was learned to improve your own.
What is troubling is how they did it. It shows how sneaky all these Internet companies are. Microsoft tracked users’ clicks in the tool bar of its Internet Explorer as they used Google’s search engine and then factored the information into their Bing search algorithms.
We need Do Not Track Me legislation to prevent the ubiquitous snooping prevalent on the Internet.
According to Mike Swift at the San Jose Mercury News, the donnybrook blew up as some of the top search scientists from Google and Microsoft convened Tuesday morning for a conference sponsored by Microsoft at UC San Francisco.
There’s nothing more fun than watching two corporate behemoths bash each other. A pox on both their houses.
2. February 2011 at 4:53 pm
You’ve heard stories where people hack into their victim’s computer and plant child porn in order to frame an innocent person. Isn’t manipulating your biggest competitors search results in order to hurt their business or set them up for legal trouble by using a blackhat seo trick pretty much the same thing?
Nothing but lies from the losers at Google again. Every time they face legal trouble they always say “well… you know a cousin of an uncle of a friend of a lawyer that represented Microsoft once visited that site. Not to mention our site is WAY better than theirs, am I right official-Google-blog-readers?” Every branch of the US government and ignorant bloggers everywhere believe Google’s claims without question. Will they let Google bash Microsoft to distract the online media world from Google’s own conduct? Absolutely. Will there be anyone that will take future attacks by Google against its competitors seriously (if any competitors remain)? No.
I’m seriously worried that they will simply reassign one of its most important team of Googlers from their task of “improving” their own products to the new task of degrading the product of their other competition. Maybe that’s why there are so many problems with Facebook. I know it’s Microsoft, but the claim that they specifically targeted Google is ridiculous. I’m guessing Bing analyzed the referring page (not one site in particular) and target URL of links its toolbar users clicked as a means of adding previously unknown pages to its index the same way Google does with its toolbar and Chrome. There’s a reason why these sites only had one search result. If Bing was intentionally systematically “stealing” Google’s search results, then you would see Google’s first search result appear at the top of Bing’s results for REAL search queries. Not for obscure terms that only exist on the internet because Google tried to feed that data to Bing.
I didn’t think Google could get any more evil, but this is worse than anyone could have imagined in any of the most paranoid, irrational conspiracy theories. They’re probably going to get away with this too. Here I was putting of designing a product Google might want to own until after they went to court…. and they surprise everyone with this despicable anticompetitive attack and publicity stunt to detract from the recent attention they started to get.