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Oh man. That research paper he quoted strongly indicates that MS is specifically targeting Google. I was totally wrong. Bing are copying Google. I'm sorry (I a

by user24 16y ago

Oh man. That research paper he quoted strongly indicates that MS is specifically targeting Google. I was totally wrong. Bing are copying Google. I'm sorry (I am the "What on earth are Google thinking" author). I still think the honeypot experiments didn't support the conclusion. But this paper coupled with Bing's lacklustre pseudo-denial strongly indicates that my view of events was not accurate and that Bing were indeed blatantly piggybacking off Google's hard work. I'm really disappointed. I gave Bing the benefit of the doubt, saw that there was another conclusion which explained Google's observations and I advocated that. But now it really looks like MS overstepped the mark and were deliberately picking out Google URLs in order to use signals from Google's algorithms to improve Bing. That really is cheating. edit: although still it's not conclusive. I don't know what to think now. I think I should stick to writing code :)

kenjackson 16y ago
In the spirit of completeness, the paper says they use Google, Bing, and Yahoo. But the paper doesn't say this is what Bing uses. Looks like it, but we should be clear. This is MSR, not Bing. Good paper though. But it is another example of MS actually not thinking its bad. They published a paper on this where they spell out how MSR would do this. Did people in the academic community protest that this would be copying if implemented?
- user24 16y ago
  Yeah, I mean you could make the argument that it's just one piece of MS research among thousands of others, etc etc, but the fact that they've sunk resource into literally spying on Google (et al) is just too much. It could still turn out that Bing don't use that technique... but it's looking a lot less likely. Especially given this whole thing started based on Google noticing their spelling corrections popping up on Bing, and stealing Google's spelling corrections is exactly what this paper was about.
- jdp23 16y ago
  Great point. In one of the earlier threads there was discussion of MSR being in a bubble, and this is a good example. Did the people publishing that paper realize it could look like copying Google's results? Almost certainly not; as a researcher, this would look to me like I was showing that the approach worked across the three biggest search engines. Researchers are supposed to do stuff like that! But in this other non-research context, with billions of dollars at stake and Microsoft's track record of being the evil empire, it can look very different ... [disclaimer: I was in MSR from 1999-2005 and then did competitive strategy for MS in 2006-2007. so that influences my perspective.]
moultano 16y ago
Those examples to me are like finding a maggot in a piece of meat. Maybe that's the only one, and if you just remove it the rest is ok, but it's going to make you pretty suspicious especially if it already smells. The reality is that it's almost impossible for google to measure how much their results influence bing. After all, they are both trying to rank the same internet. The best they can do is prove the obvious cases and let bing do the explaining.
- user24 16y ago
  > they are both trying to rank the same internet. Yeah, this was a point I wanted to make in one of my blog posts. If Google wanted to claim some kind of ownership over SERPs, that would be ridiculous because you could easily argue that there is only one correct set of "ten links ordered from most relevant to least" for each query. Eventually all search engines will converge on the same ten results for every query. I don't think Google ever made such a claim of ownership, but it was taken that way by some.
Matt_Cutts 16y ago
user24, I didn't make the connection that you did those "What on earth are Google thinking" posts--just wanted to say thanks for your tweet earlier. It made me feel like doing the post wasn't such a bad idea.
- user24 16y ago
  I just wish you'd found that research right in the beginning! It's still not 100% conclusive, but it adds a lot more weight to your claims. But still, I don't understand why Bing felt it necessary to specifically target you! The generic approach of mining all URLs indiscriminately, which I advocated, would have had largely the same impact and would be defensible against claims of cheating. It's crazy. There was no need to copy directly from Google and yet it looks very much like they still did.

by user24 16y ago

kenjackson 16y ago

In the spirit of completeness, the paper says they use Google, Bing, and Yahoo. But the paper doesn't say this is what Bing uses. Looks like it, but we should be clear. This is MSR, not Bing. Good paper though. But it is another example of MS actually not thinking its bad. They published a paper on this where they spell out how MSR would do this. Did people in the academic community protest that this would be copying if implemented?

user24 16y ago
Yeah, I mean you could make the argument that it's just one piece of MS research among thousands of others, etc etc, but the fact that they've sunk resource into literally spying on Google (et al) is just too much. It could still turn out that Bing don't use that technique... but it's looking a lot less likely. Especially given this whole thing started based on Google noticing their spelling corrections popping up on Bing, and stealing Google's spelling corrections is exactly what this paper was about.
jdp23 16y ago
Great point. In one of the earlier threads there was discussion of MSR being in a bubble, and this is a good example. Did the people publishing that paper realize it could look like copying Google's results? Almost certainly not; as a researcher, this would look to me like I was showing that the approach worked across the three biggest search engines. Researchers are supposed to do stuff like that! But in this other non-research context, with billions of dollars at stake and Microsoft's track record of being the evil empire, it can look very different ... [disclaimer: I was in MSR from 1999-2005 and then did competitive strategy for MS in 2006-2007. so that influences my perspective.]

moultano 16y ago

Those examples to me are like finding a maggot in a piece of meat. Maybe that's the only one, and if you just remove it the rest is ok, but it's going to make you pretty suspicious especially if it already smells. The reality is that it's almost impossible for google to measure how much their results influence bing. After all, they are both trying to rank the same internet. The best they can do is prove the obvious cases and let bing do the explaining.

user24 16y ago
> they are both trying to rank the same internet. Yeah, this was a point I wanted to make in one of my blog posts. If Google wanted to claim some kind of ownership over SERPs, that would be ridiculous because you could easily argue that there is only one correct set of "ten links ordered from most relevant to least" for each query. Eventually all search engines will converge on the same ten results for every query. I don't think Google ever made such a claim of ownership, but it was taken that way by some.

Matt_Cutts 16y ago

user24, I didn't make the connection that you did those "What on earth are Google thinking" posts--just wanted to say thanks for your tweet earlier. It made me feel like doing the post wasn't such a bad idea.

user24 16y ago
I just wish you'd found that research right in the beginning! It's still not 100% conclusive, but it adds a lot more weight to your claims. But still, I don't understand why Bing felt it necessary to specifically target you! The generic approach of mining all URLs indiscriminately, which I advocated, would have had largely the same impact and would be defensible against claims of cheating. It's crazy. There was no need to copy directly from Google and yet it looks very much like they still did.