I have to say, this entire fiasco is destroying Bing's reputation, I'm having relatives e-mail me about this just to take jabs at Bing, because I told them that I really like Bing.  People now think that Bing is basically copying all of Google's results.

Harry - I'm glad to see Bing being transparent about data usage and honestly, I think this is the right call. When a market leader has a 7-year headstart, I fully expect that you should use every arsenal in the toolbox.

This is, to some degree, within Google's rights to complain about. You're using their data in a smart way to improve relevancy and they built a nice honeytrap to expose it. That said, the timing of their release made them look really bad. To sit on info like this for 30 days, waiting until they knew you'd be in the room together and employing the news to deflect from their own spam/relevancy issues just isn't cool.

Here's to hoping that we can be more professional and authentic about criticism, praise and search quality issues in the future on both sides.

So, you basically admitted you're spying on Google Search to steal their quality results.

It's not surprising, they proved it, so you cannot say you didn't do that.

 Congrats!

  www.google.com/.../vkelman

@randfish

Why would someone put an arsenal in a toolbox? You really need to work on your metaphors. As far as shifting blame goes, you got that one down.

In 1000 different signals you have you've picked the worst one. Direct copying of results is just below anything.

@randfish: yes, MSN Search/Live/Bing had 7-year start as a market leader (actually, I thought it was AltaVista?) but now they aren't. Now we have only what is, essentially, a Google carbon copy, an imitator, an imposter. Sad.

@asdasd

But it's not a google carbon copy, like the post said, using user habits to index is only one way that it indexes.  It doesn't use the Google Search results to say, "Ok, so this is on Google's front page, I should now put this on Bing's front page".  It simply indexes the site.

Well played Bing team :)

Those who think this is "direct copying of results" are mistaken. Google's spinning the PR that way, but that's not what happens. Bing uses signals like clickthrough on SERPs in their 1000 factor algorithm. When you remove any other signals (which is what Google's honeypot did), all you're left with is the 1 Google thought they catch MS using, and that's what happened.

I know it's compelling to attach onto the simple "Bing stole from Google" story, but like everything else in the media, it's a vast oversimplification. I'm hard-pressed to believe that anyone who was tasked with beating Google at search wouldn't employ this tactic if they had access to it.

"But it doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience."

You mean how Bing uses IE/toolbar user's personal communication between the user and a 3rd party website? which you opt-in for them by default?  Yeah, your portraying of the story is more accurate alright.

If every arsenal in your toolbox is fair game, then why don't you just redirect all "www.google.com" url to "www.bing.com" in IE while you are at it.

So when are we going to start seeing "Powered by Google" on Bing results?

Many companies have internal database-based search for the products on their catalog.  So if a customer is using my own search and locates a product in my catalog, and happens to have the Bing toolbar installed, then Bing Toolbar will pass that information to Microsoft.

Then next time someone asks Bing about that product, Bing will be able to direct them directly to my product page.

So suddenly OMG Bing is copying my search algorithm?  And this practice should stop?

Personally I really don't see what's wrong with this.  In fact, if the data helps Microsoft identify why I couldn't find something in Bing but I could with Google, so they can tweak their query and improve the results, I'm all for it.

The whole "copying" is a really lousy marketing spin.

@privacy-alert

When is the last time IE automatically installed the toolbar or opt-in by default?  Have you actually done this recently or are you just prejudiced to begin with?

So if I took years of R&D to make the algorithm that can find your result, and the other company can just use my result and display as their own?  I don't think so.  If Bing can't find something for you.  They should just improve their algorithm so they can find the result.  Get result from others is low.

From the orignal article by Danny Sullivan, linked above.

"When you install the toolbar, by default it is set to collect information to 'improve' your experience, as you can see:"

A more accurate discription of this approach might be that Bing is using the click behavior of google users to improve Bing results - not google results. There is an important distinction in that statement. Bing is not copying Google or their results -rather It is learning from user behaviors across several sites, one of which might include google. Another example might be if lots of people are visiting a breaking news article, one could imagine Bing might consider ranking that article higher in their news section based on user click behavior/interest. Yet, that would mean that Bing is copying the ranking of news sites, who might also have that result at a top spot on their homepage.

I wonder how you'd feel if your child got caught cheating in a test at school and told you "but I only copied a couple of the answers". Microsoft's behavior is outright cheating, copying the other kids results, arguing about the degree of cheating just makes you look like a guilty schoolchild in front of the headmaster.

blogs.palantir.co.za/.../bing-caught-cheating.aspx