8 ms·
I read half of this. Its late, and I don't have the time or energy to refute point by point every single wrong thing that is written in that half. Its easy to
by geuis 16y ago
I read half of this. Its late, and I don't have the time or energy to refute point by point every single wrong thing that is written in that half.
Its easy to sum up. Yes, Google indexes hundreds of millions of sites. It does so in order for other people to be able to search and find those sites, which is important to their owners. Its a symbiotic relationship, not theft of intellectual property.
Google has spent billions of dollars in manpower and physical capacity in order to be able to do that. Also, each and every one of those sites can very easily say "don't index me" with a simple robot.txt file on their site. Some do, most don't, because most sites find it valuable for Google to index them.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to compete in the same space as Google. They are also spending lots of money and manpower to build their search engine. But, by using Google's search results to improve their own product, they are acting as a parasite. Google gets no benefit from Microsoft using their data.
So to sum up my own summary: Google is a mass symbiote, Microsoft is a parasite.
- axod 16y agoAlso websites can opt-out of having their content indexed. How can Google opt-out of having its search index copied by Microsoft? The funniest argument in this has been "Bing hasn't got the data, Google has an unfair advantage etc" as if Microsoft didn't exist before Google. Microsoft have had years headstart to get their online division doing something worthwhile, but they still can't get it right.
- kevin_morrill 16y agoPut up a terms of use or force users to accept a license agreement. They do no such thing today. So I think you'd have a hard time saying Microsoft has done anything legally wrong here.
- axod 16y agoThey've done as much legally wrong as bundling IE with windows. It's most certainly morally wrong. I want to see a project started to r/e the bing toolbar, and create something to send rubbish data back to bing to screw up their search index. That'd be awesome to see.
- ericd 16y agoWe're discussing morality, not legality. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
- jamesgeck0 16y agoGoogle already has terms of service. You agree to them by using Google. http://www.google.com/accounts/ http://www.google.com/accounts/ 5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.
- HardyLeung 16y agoIn this case I don't think Microsoft violates Google's TOS because it is not directly consuming the "service" provided by Google, but rather peeking at what the user has done (and by installing the toolbar the user has already agreed to let Bing do it).
- MarkMc 16y agoImagine the Google terms of service said, 'Users must not share any information we provide with anyone else'. Does that mean that use of the Microsoft toolbar would violate these terms and Google could sue Microsoft to stop them using the 'clickstream' data?
- mooism2 16y ago<meta name=robots content="noindex,nofollow">?
- axod 16y agoI'm pretty sure microsoft doesn't care... They're capturing what users click on, which doesn't include any information about the wishes of the website owner.
- mooism2 16y agoGiven the case of misspellings, Bing appear to associate what the user types into a text box with the link they subsequently follow. I think this counts as extracting information from the Google results page. <meta name=robots> is designed to prevent search engines automatically extracting information from web pages. By involving a human in the process, Bing are (presumably) avoiding this rule. Is this a good thing? I accept that Bing don't access the page content itself, so wouldn't be able to see the <meta> tag if it was there.
- jonburs 16y agoNo one has shown any evidence that Microsoft has directly copied Google's search index, or even violated the directives in google.com's robots.txt file. What Microsoft apparently has done is to infer relationships from Gooogle SRPs to various sites by way of information gathered through the Bing toolbar (and possibly other documented and user opt-in channels w/in IE). Using toolbar collected signals is well-established practice -- that's how Google obtains information regarding site performance.
- johnjhayes 16y agoThe only thing I haven't seen is this. Ok, using the clickstream data is an established practice, but does Google use clickstream data from users making searches on OTHER search engines, or just their own? This is the crux for me, Bing is using data from Google, does Google use data from Bing or only themselves? Even if all true, I don't see it as unethical business practice. Definitely a marketing black eye, but not much else.
- spot 16y agoThe information flows one way, from Google to Bing. Google is careful not to do this.
- dschobel 16y agoGoogle gets no benefit from Microsoft using their data. What happened to the Google line of "the more happy searching people we have online the better" (usually brought out in justification of their android investment)? Shouldn't the same logic apply? Especially since at least half of the people using Bing aren't doing so voluntarily § shouldn't google be willing to trade that one search for having everyone happy on the internet and consuming more of it? Is an incremental increase in Bing's search quality really going to take market share away from google? I'm skeptical. § 50% of Bing's traffic comes from fb, msn and windows live mail: http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/google-is-4th-largest-traffic-source-for-bing.html http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/google-is-4th-largest-traff...
- greyman 16y agoMicrosoft do NOT steal Google's search results. They use clickstream data from Bing toolbar users to improve their search results. What happened is that Google engineers engineered a use case, in which signal from those clickstream appear like a stealing of search results. Or in other words, Microsoft uses Google users behaviour in their ranking algorithm. But that's not unethical, and Google is doing the same thing.
- dekz 16y agoMicrosoft uses behaviour I doubt they are only targeting Google. But I completely agree, the data is not being mined from Google, it's a relationship for search term a to page b created by the user, not stolen from Google.
- moultano 16y agoGoogle is the one creating the association, not the user. The relationship between term a and page b was created by Google, and confirmed by a user. People don't click on search results that aren't there.
- stanleydrew 16y agoThis is the most important comment I've read so far on this issue. What everything comes down to is whether user generated associations between searches and results via clicks are fair game as a signal. As this comment points out, there is a decent argument that searchers on Google or other engines aren't the ones creating the associations, and therefore perhaps Bing has no right to use that data.
- evgen 16y agoGoogle is not creating the association. Users are creating the associations, Google is discovering them and presenting them back to other users, and subsequent users are confirming the associations. In this case Google engineers, masquerading as users, created associations, then Google presented those associations back to the user, and Bing noticed the association between the term and the page. The relationship between a term and a page was not created by Google, it was created by users. Google just indexes everything and makes note of these associations, but its does not create the link in the first place.
- masklinn 16y ago> I read half of this. Its late, and I don't have the time or energy to refute point by point every single wrong thing that is written in that half. It's dilger, why would you bother reading that tripe at all?
- toddmorey 16y agoI don't know. I actually think he has a pretty good point here. I'm generally positive on Google but I'm embarrassed by their public tantrum. If I was advising a startup with similar grievances against a competitor, I'd strongly encourage them to avoid this distraction. It just feels like bruised ego. And so far, I think Google's cause has been hurt more than helped.
- wingo 16y agoRegardless of whether you think Google is more or less evil than Microsoft, what does it matter how many billions they spent? It's silly to hold onto some murky moral click-ownership here. It would still be silly, even if it hadn't given Google billions of dollars in profit, every quarter.
- jrwoodruff 16y agoRead the rest of it. The last half ties the argument together quite nicely.
- tree_of_item 16y agoI didn't even read the article. It's late and I'm not going to bother addressing any of the author's points. But he's wrong. I can't understand why people make posts like this.
- gcb 16y agoWrong. Google uses the link-out of other sites to rank the linked site. So if I have a site that review sites about x, google will use my links to rank the sites about x. It will benefit google, sites about x, advertisers for x, users searching for x. But NEVER me. now, replace "me" for "google" and "google"for "bing". And you will see how you and google are being hypocrite
- ramidarigaz 16y agoYou may not benefit from the indexing of your link, but you certainly benefit from the indexing of other people's links. Unless, of course, you don't use search on the internet.
- gcb 16y agoBy your argument. Google benefits from the doing of Bing, unless of course they don't search on the internet. (the internet meaning Bing, as oposed to your comment, where the internet was meaning Google)