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Bing shows results that MS asked Google to take down
- mikeryan 14y agoYou know this is one of those things that sounds terribly hypocritical but in a massive company can easily be just the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Its hard for me to see this as anything more then typical large co bureaucracy.
- ajross 14y agoMy intuition agrees too, this is just a goof. But it's important to note that this isn't merely hypocrisy. By offering useful search results that Google doesn't, Microsoft makes Bing a more attractive search engine. This process certainly could be abused if MS wanted -- XBox and Windows cracks are clearly desired content.
- kenrikm 14y agoIt seems (in this case) that Microsoft makes the best search engine to steal from.. Microsoft. Bravo guys! Well done keep up the good work in Redmond.
- ajross 14y ago"Steal?" You drank the koolaid. The fact that they haven't rectified this in their own search engine should be pretty good evidence that copying and piracy are not, in fact, "theft" and that they don't represent lost sales.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago>The fact that they haven't rectified this in their own search engine should be pretty good evidence that copying and piracy are not, in fact, "theft" and that they don't represent lost sales What? Does not compute.
- ajross 14y agoIf MS truly felt they were losing money, they'd shut down the links. Bing links are, for obvious reasons, much easier to shut down than Google links. But they didn't. You can do the rest of the computation.
- clarky07 14y agoNever attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by incompetence.
- rbanffy 14y agoIt's much easier to do when the incompetence is not this selective.
- cpeterso 14y agoIf MS removed those links from Bing, then people might complain that MS is selectively altering search results for its own benefit. (I'm only half-joking.)
- duaneb 14y agoMore likely the legal team just forgot that Bing exists.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
- grhino 14y agoOr Bing doesn't even fall on Microsoft Entertainment's radar. I would expect the fiefdoms to defend their own turf.
- latch 14y agoI'm not following...there aren't 2 parties. There's 1 party, the people sending a take down notice. The question is why aren't they sending the same take down notices to all search engines which have the material in question?
- myko 14y agoMaybe they have and Bing just prioritizes requests differently? This is interesting though, when I saw the headline about Microsoft making so many takedown requests to Google I assumed the items to be taken down were found by the Bing team, but it seems that isn't the case.
- kenrikm 14y agoMaybe it is and the Bing team only uses Google to find the links. (lol) Actually didn't Microsoft force their employees to use only Microsoft products? Sometimes it's not fun to eat your own dogfood.
- ishansharma 14y agoAs far as I remember, it was them asking not to buy iPhone. Nothing more. They can't force their employees to use only Microsoft products. They'd be down in a day!
- smackfu 14y agoThe 2nd party is the team at the search engine that has to take the link down. Maybe Google processes the notices more efficiently. Or maybe Bing prioritizes non-MS takedowns, because they are at greater risk of suit from them.
- corin_ 14y agoQuite possibly for the same reason that many, if not most (? I've no idea, really, but certainly plenty of), SEO companies consider Google to be the only actual target, because Bing just isn't popular enough to spend the time on. If there was a search engine out there that had 10 uniques per month would you expect people to care enough to send take-down notices to them? So where do you draw the line... for some people, you draw it between Google and Bing, not below them both.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoWell it points out that Microsoft's internal processes are not well run. Presumably if Microsoft ever chose to sue Google over those contested links it would be a reasonable defense on Google's part that they were doing better than Microsoft's own search engine in complying. If you read Eric Goldman's excellent blog on the topic you can see that to keep your safe harbor status you have to be credibly trying to comply with requests. Being 'better' (as in more compliant) than Microsoft's own search engine would seem to be pretty good affirmative defense.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago>Presumably if Microsoft ever chose to sue Google over those contested links it would be a reasonable defense on Google's part that they were doing better than Microsoft's own search engine in complying. If you read Eric Goldman's excellent blog on the topic you can see that to keep your safe harbor status you have to be credibly trying to comply with requests You're assuming that their law firm sent Bing the takedown request of which there is no evidence. Also, they're completely within their rights to host links of which they own copyright on their own search engine.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoThat's a valid point, although in the case of links pointing to 'cracked' versions of their tools or operating system it might look silly for Bing to continue to link to them.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago>to host links of which they own copyright on their own search engine // They don't own a copyright on the torrentroom link (for example). There is no copyright in a regular URL¹. They apparently own the content linked to. But then I own the content of my house that the road network is linked to and that doesn't mean the local government is party to people taking my stuff without asking. Links may be made unlawful but they're not copyright infringements. IMO they're not even contributory. -- ¹ It may be possible to craft a URL that has sufficient distinctiveness and artistic merit to acquire a copyright but I can't ever recall seeing one or hearing of one. A URL could be a trademark infringement of course.
- Tichy 14y agoAlthough it seems weird that they would have different groups for "remove stuff from Google" and "remove stuff from Bing". Why wouldn't they simply have a group for "remove stuff from search engines"?
- calbear81 14y agoI don't even think it was Bing who asked for those links to be removed, it was actually the X-Box division trying to prevent piracy of games on their platform. If anything, Bing probably is much slower and less adept at being able to block these results when compared to Google hence the discrepancy.
- jcoder 14y agoAnyone else surprised that the use of "bitch" as a verb is suddenly acceptable journalism?
- tankbot 14y agoPremature optimization. First there's the matter of whether or not TechDirt is "journalism." I'm not saying that to be snarky, just pointing out there's still a lot of debate surrounding this issue.
- Zirro 14y agoI don't think TechDirt aims to be "on par" with the traditional newspapers when it comes to "controversial" language ;)
- jcoder 14y agoFuck, I don't give two shits about "controversial" language--but overtly, aggressively sexist language? Fuck that.
- Zirro 14y agoWait, do you really consider "bitch" or "bitching" in these contexts sexist, nowadays? I've seen it applied to both genders, and, as in this case, a verb. It's moved on from the controversial stage to a common expression.
- jcoder 14y agoNo, I don't buy that at all. It's unfortunate that it has moved to the common usage, because it is equivalent to "when you complain you sound like a woman, and that is bad." People should learn to speak respectfully instead of normalizing legitimately offensive language.
- Karunamon 14y agoWhen it becomes normalized, it's not offensive anymore.. or at least that's how I've always seen it. Meanings of words do change over time.
- barik 14y agoI've gotten several of these types of notices before. Usually, it isn't Microsoft that does them directly ("Internet1@microsoft-antipiracy.com"). For instance, the ones I've received as usually signed as "on behalf of Microsoft Corporation" with some third-party legal firm blindly handing these out. So the fact that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing is probably quite accurate in this case.
- wastedbrains 14y agowow that is some interesting corporate issues... Look our search engine is better it has so many more results... Which we believe to be illegal links and won't let any other search engines help you find... Bing, the best for your warez needs.
- lmm 14y agoOr maybe this company that sent the takedowns, Marketly (not MS, just someone with whom they have a contract), never sent takedowns to Bing. (Why is of course open to speculation; maybe Bing isn't popular enough to be worth the effort)
- nextparadigms 14y agoThat still leaves Microsoft in a position where they pay others to send takedown notices to their competitor for the stuff they don't bother to take down themselves. You'd think they'd do that for themselves, too, if they thought those links are so horrible for their own business. My guess is they just want to mess with Google and waste their time on money chasing hundreds of thousands of links a month.
- lmm 14y agoMan, you need to pay more attention to Hanlon's Razor. What's actually happened is Microsoft's xbox division has paid this company to do something about xbox piracy. And this company has sent takedowns (legitimate, I might add) to google, not out of some dastardly plan to waste google's time, but to try and make it harder to find pirated xbox games. The juiciest angle supported by the facts is "third-party Microsoft supplier thinks google more useful than bing", and while that's not exactly flattering to microsoft, it tells us nothing we didn't already know.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ktizo 14y agoI am loving the takedown notice for the takedown notice. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/requests/133649/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/... Perhaps this is the solution to the entire problem, trap the whole system in a recursive loop. Although then perhaps all the telephones in the world will ring until Douglas Hofstadter answers one of them.
- joering2 14y agoany idea whats wrong with that chillingeffects.org ?
- raldi 14y agoIs that a reference to something? I'm imagining Hofstadter telling fans to call a number at random, and ask the person who answers to call another number at random and repeat the request to whoever answers, with the end result being that Hofstadter's phone would ring and you could talk to him. That sounds like something he'd do, but I can't find a mention of it on Google.
- ktizo 14y agoEnd of lawnmower man. [edit] but with Douglas Hofstadter. And a kitten. But the kitten is just out of shot, so we can't really see it.
- josefresco 14y agoI'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe MS is okay with Bing returning results, even pirate results that Google does not. Maybe MS agrees with the Pirate mantra that piracy doesn't hurt, but help sales. What would happen if pirates, even casual pirates learned that Bing results weren't filtered but Google's were? I would suspect a massive uptake in usage if this was proven. And who are these pirates? They're the most geeky of your friends, the ones who influence and tutor the non-tech savvy about what tech products and services to use (Bing, Windows, Office etc.) Crazy? Probably. But still fun to consider. Too bad MS is too big, slow and traditional to do something this radical.
- brudgers 14y agoI see a different and more likely possibility. Microsoft has an interest in tracking usage patterns among those inclined toward pirating their software. If the pirates use Google, then they don't have access to that data, whereas they do with Bing. It's not as if Google is likely to share their information.
- rbanffy 14y agoProtecting Microsoft's market share and its associated network effect is very important for them - if Windows' share falls below a certain level, writing Word documents, sending PowerPoint presentations, keeping your e-mail in Exchange and your workflows in SharePoint will make much less sense than it does today. As it happens, Microsoft products become less attractive and their share spirals toward an equilibrium point given by their cost/benefit ratio as compared to their competitors. Even if they lose some sales to piracy, as long as network effect work to their advantage, it's worth to lose it to a free version of their product than to a competitor. It's unsurprising if they turn a blind eye to piracy when they judge it benefits them. Having said that, this looks a lot like incompetence, or a contractor that's being paid to issue takedown notices only to Google.
- bobsy 14y agoIts odd. Its either an over sight. Takedown lost in bureaucracy. Or.. perhaps comically. This is a third party issueing takedowns on Microsofts behalf. Isn't submiting to Bing due to lack of market share?
- mossplix 14y agoBing tracks everyone who clicks the links
- nextstep 14y agoNow, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that if Marketly is sending a takedown to Google to get such a link taken out of its search engine, on behalf of Microsoft, that it quite likely is issuing the same kind of takedown to Microsoft's Bing (hell, you'd perhaps think that Microsoft could just pull the link without a takedown). I doubt that Microsoft is streamlined enough to allow different departments (Bing and whomever handles DMCAs) to effectively communicate. Microsoft is an immense bureaucracy.
- merraksh 14y agoIf we were to ascribe this to malice, MS achieves two things. First, those search results won't be available at least on one of the main search engines, and this has the effect of cutting the number of illegal downloads. Second, MS has just gotten some traffic to Bing --- MS sure won't be happy to see all those requests for Xbox game torrents, but now it has a little more control on them.
- cpeterso 14y agoGoogle send takedown requests to Bing for these same Microsoft links.
- digitalman 14y agoMS hires a third party to police these SERPs. The third party does't send notices to Bing because they'd be threatening their own client! It's that simple. Anything more would require additional effort and initiative and coordination between the contracting team, the contractor, and the Bing team. Probably someone just hired the third party, turned them loose and didn't put any more thought into it.
- ishansharma 14y agoBut what are they trying to gain? Users? For me, if I do not find a result on Google, search is over. I never try Bing!
- jitbit 14y agoOh, come one people. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_razor
- A1kmm 14y agoIt seems surprising that Microsoft even owns copyright in the works that are claimed. "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction" is apparently a Ubisoft product, which is a publicly traded company distinct from Microsoft. Copyright in "Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga" is apparently held by LucasArts. While they all appear to be Xbox 360 games, being a platform manufacturer doesn't usually mean you own the content produced for that platform. It is possible that the games linked against a Microsoft library, and are infringing against the Microsoft's rights in the library, but then the declaration needs to declare that "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed" - which means that the allegation of what is being infringed (i.e. a library and not the entire work) should have matched the work Microsoft owned.