A fascinating article written by Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land provides great detail about accusations made by Google that Microsoft’s Bing is cheating and copying Google search results.
In a nutshell: Microsoft Bing uses data captured by the Suggested Sites feature in Internet Explorer and/or the Bing Toolbar to provide and rank search results on Bing. This in itself isn’t the issue — unless you’re an IE or Bing Toolbar user and didn’t previously realize what you’d opted in to. At issue are the experiments that Google conducted that they say prove that Bing is not simply using the collected data to inform their site indexing process; but instead establish that Bing is actually copying Google search results and displaying them as their own.
The Bing team’s response to Google’s accusations frames the process taking place as a crowdsource/clickstream hybrid instead of a straight-up copy operation; and I’ll bet Bing hasn’t limited their efforts to Google — search engines, even. Best-case scenario for Bing’s reputation: They’ve been factoring all browsing activity that users have permitted in Bing’s own site indexing and ranking logic, and anonymizing the data prior to acquisition. If this is the case, users have agreed to play a part; and one could reasonably argue that Bing is simply trying to serve those users well by using unconventional means to improve the experience of using their product.
As a developer and a user, I find myself sympathizing with Google’s position that Bing is doing something it shouldn’t. If Bing has in fact, targeted Google as a source for content and page rank, then it begs one to ask a few questions. If users can depend on Google to find the same content, is Bing really providing value? If Yahoo was willing to ink a deal with Bing prior to publishing Bing results on Yahoo properties, doesn’t it suggest that Bing should be willing to treat Google search results as something deserving valuation and requiring permission for use? Are search results on Bing — or by proxy, Yahoo — really the result of Google’s tech often enough to characterize Bing’s actions as stealing instead of competing?
If Bing is simply leveraging permitted, aggregated user behavior to benefit its users, I’ll probably file this episode away as a non-issue. If instead, Bing is cheating and stealing from Google, Bing deserves every bit of criticism and consequence it has coming.
Update – 2/7/2011: In a follow-up article on February 4, 2011, Bing: Why Google’s Wrong In Its Accusations, Danny Sullivan recounts his discussions with Bing’s Harry Shum and Stefan Weitz following the publication of the February 1st article discussed above. While Mr. Sullivan seems to give Bing a fair hearing, his conclusions are ambiguous. From my perspective, the account of Google’s accusations continues to move toward the “non-issue” category I discussed last week. Through Mr. Sullivan’s articles, we may have learned more about novel techniques search engines are using to provide relevant results, but we also witnessed over-eagerness result in a catalyst for sensationalism.
I wasn’t surprised by the techniques being employed by Bing, I wasn’t surprised that Google took issue with them, and I’m not surprised by Bing’s response. I was surprised however, that Mr. Sullivan decided to publish his first article without including the kind of detail he provided in the second. Until I hear otherwise, I’ll afford Mr. Sullivan the benefit of the doubt and assume that he made an effort to get a response from Bing, and details were not forthcoming.
Tact, discretion and balance are important components of journalism and blogging; and if they were underutilized in this case, we — journalists and bloggers alike — should all use this example to remind ourselves to stay disciplined.
Amy [Chyao], a sixteen-year-old high school junior from Richardson, Texas, has developed a photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy (PDT), an emerging cancer treatment which uses light energy to activate a drug that kills cancer cells. After her freshman year biology class, Amy became interested in cancer research and came up with an idea for improving the way medicine is designed. So over her summer vacation she taught herself some basic chemistry and began her research. With her work, Amy won the first place Gordon E. Moore Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, a program of Society for Science & the Public, in May 2010. Since taking home the top prize at the Intel science fair, she and her teacher have received inquiries from researchers who are actually implementing the therapy and are interested in her work. Amy, whose parents came here from China, is also a cellist and tutors younger children in her spare time. Amy met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair.
Brandon [Ford], a junior at West Philadelphia High School, is a leader of the West Philly Hybrid X Team which includes students from an after school program at the West Philadelphia High School Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. West Philadelphia is a public high school serving one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Brandon and the Hybrid X team recently entered two cars in the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE competition, a global challenge that sought to deliver production-ready highly fuel efficient vehicles. As high school students, they successfully went head to head with corporations, universities and other well-funded organizations from around the world, even advancing to an elimination round with their Ford Focus that got an official 65.1 MPGe. Brandon is also one of a group of students who entered the Conrad Foundation’s Spirit of Innovation Awards with their proposal for an Electric Very Light Car. He and 4 other students spent many hours writing the proposal and graphic for the contest. Brandon is a dedicated and hard working team member; for example, last week he worked with the team Tuesday, Thursday, all day Saturday, and then on Sunday participated with the team in a MLK Day of Service activity. He also plays varsity football for West Philadelphia High School. Brandon and the West Philly Hybrid X team attended the President’s September 2010 “Change the Equation” event.
Mikayla Nelson is currently a freshman at Central Catholic High School in Billings, Montana. As a middle schooler at Will James Middle School, she led her Science Bowl team to a 1st place finish at the National Science Bowl for the design document of their solar car. They also won 5th place in the U.S. Dept of Energy’s Junior Solar Sprint. In addition to excelling academically, Mikayla is taking flying lessons in hopes of attaining her pilot’s license, is building a 1932 Pietenpol Sky Scout airplane, runs her own birdhouse business, and is restoring a 1967 VW Beetle . She also works at a local hobby store to help cover the cost of her school tuition. Mikayla is working towards acceptance at the United State Air Force Academy where she hopes to major in mechanical engineering. Mikayla met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair where she represented her Science Bowl team and exhibited their solar car.
Diego Vasquez, currently a freshman at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, was a member of the 12 person team from Cesar Chavez High School in Laveen, Arizona that won a grant through the Lemelson-MIT Program’s InvenTeams initiative for their design of a fully adjustable motorized chair for medically fragile individuals. The team decided to design the chair, which is to be used primarily for physical therapy, after seeing a disabled friend and fellow student struggle at school. The students and their families held a tamale “bake sale” so that the entire team could travel to MIT to attend EurekaFest, the Lemelson-MIT Program’s annual celebration of invention. For many members of the team, flying to Eurekafest was their first time on a plane. Diego hopes to become an aerospace engineer. Diego met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair where he represented his team and demonstrated their chair.
The 
Early last month, an interesting package was delivered. “If this is what I think it is, I’m buying a hamster tonight!” My wife opened the box, and instead of a hamster-powered jet dragster, she pulled out a small, black monolith. My memory was jogged. “Oh yeah . . . fun!” The little black slab: the Cr-48 test notebook from Google that I had been waiting for.
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