The blogosphere is buzzing about how Google has charged Bing with cheating or copying its results. And they have proof that it happens.
1. What is the charge and what is the proof:
Google had 20 engineers use winXP machines with the Bing toolbar installed while searching for their own random search terms… and do that for a couple of weeks. and after that time – it shows up on google. ergo they are cheating.
2. The Defense
The Googlers used Bing’s toolbar, agreed to the EULA, agreed to send user data back for Bing to improve its service. And since the googlers were consistently providing these ‘garbage’ results, that brought the results seeded by Google. The Bing toolbar sent that data back to Bing which used that data to improve its results and return the valid result. So, it worked.
Is google claming that any data that any user types on google.com is their data? and the fact that they went through the trouble of using 20 Googlers to do this – for lets guesstimate – 500 hours… that roughly means about $10,000 dollars to see/find out how Bing was able to evolve so quickly means that they are worried, and they wanted to find out how Bing was able to do it. And if anyone is thinking that Google doesnt do that with their data already is too naive. Google definitely uses its logs to improve data, and i’m sure they use Chrome browsing history to see how things go. Whether they do it efficiently enough as Bing to evolve the results so quickly is another matter.
In the end, I’ve switched to Bing, because it gets the data I want that I think is most relevant – does it need more work – of course, and I’m sure people are working hard to make it better each day while providing a pleasant experience, rather than the bland and boring Google page.