Google: Sting proves Bing copied search results

[bxflow]

Microsoft's search engine Bing is copying results from Google, the dominant search engine on the internet, has claimed.

Suspicious of their new rival, Google engineers set up random results on their site for a series of unlikely search terms, such as "hiybbprqag." (Google arranged for the nonsense word to point to a Los Angeles theater seating plan on its search engine.)
"Within a couple weeks of starting this experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing," Google said in a statement on its official blog Tuesday.


Google said it welcomed honest competition, but sneered at Bing's "recycled search results from a competitor."


Bing did not deny that it took Google into account when producing its own search results, but suggested they were only one factor among many. They also accused Google in turn of a "spy-novelesque stunt" that would only affect very unusual search terms.


"We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm," Bing vice president Harry Shum said Tuesday, referring to the mathematical code that search engines use to choose their results.
Each company develops its own search algorithms, and the quality of the results depends on them, making them the key to a search engine's effectiveness.


Bing gets "a small piece" of the data for its algorithm "from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users," Shum said, saying many internet companies used "collective intelligence" gathered online the same way.


He shrugged off Google's sting as "a creative tactic by a competitor, and we'll take it as a back-handed compliment."


Google had more than 70% of the U.S. search engine market as of the end of August, when it started running its sting, according to Experian Hitwise, which monitors web traffic. Bing had just under 10%.

bxflow Reviewed by bxflow on 2nd Feb 2011. Google: Sting proves Bing copied search results Microsoft's search engine Bing is copying results from Google, the dominant search engine on the internet, has claimed. Suspicious of their new rival, Google engineers set up random results on their site for a series of unlikely search terms, such as "hiybbprqag." (Google arranged for the nonsense word to point to a Los Angeles theater seating plan on its search engine.) "Within a couple weeks of starting this experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing," Google said Rating: 5

[0ccul7]

lol...bing is stealing Google's search results and they even got caught....still they wont agree to it

[bxflow]

google is pretty smart to come up with an idea like this:

Hmm lets make "hiybbprqag" a search word and point it to a hotel

[0ccul7]

that was a nice plan indeed

[fdls]

bing ping ding... No other way for bing to make over google.. so copy paste

[DeLeTeD]

lmfao I could make a search engine like bing if thats the concept

Why use bing if they grab search results from google in a 1-3week span if you can use google and get the latest results.

[Vibe]

Is this going to bother anyone who uses bing anyway?

Seriously bing users are mainly people who have it by default and haven't visited emperor google yet.

[Dean2k]

Bing = Fail

[mikeee]

Shame on you bing...stop copying results and calling them factors