Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it

[infinity]

By now, you may have read Danny Sullivan’s recent post: “Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results” and heard Microsoft’s response, “We do not copy Google's results.” However you define copying, the bottom line is, these Bing results came directly from Google.

I’d like to give you some background and details of our experiments that lead us to understand just how Bing is using Google web search results.

It all started with tarsorrhaphy. Really. As it happens, tarsorrhaphy is a rare surgical procedure on eyelids. And in the summer of 2010, we were looking at the search results for an unusual misspelled query [torsorophy]. Google returned the correct spelling—tarsorrhaphy—along with results for the corrected query. At that time, Bing had no results for the misspelling. Later in the summer, Bing started returning our first result to their users without offering the spell correction (see screenshots below). This was very strange. How could they return our first result to their users without the correct spelling? Had they known the correct spelling, they could have returned several more relevant results for the corrected query.





This example opened our eyes, and over the next few months we noticed that URLs from Google search results would later appear in Bing with increasing frequency for all kinds of queries: popular queries, rare or unusual queries and misspelled queries. Even search results that we would consider mistakes of our algorithms started showing up on Bing.

We couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on, and our suspicions became much stronger in late October 2010 when we noticed a significant increase in how often Google’s top search result appeared at the top of Bing’s ranking for a variety of queries. This statistical pattern was too striking to ignore. To test our hypothesis, we needed an experiment to determine whether Microsoft was really using Google’s search results in Bing’s ranking.

We created about 100 “synthetic queries”—queries that you would never expect a user to type, such as [hiybbprqag]. As a one-time experiment, for each synthetic query we inserted as Google’s top result a unique (real) webpage which had nothing to do with the query. Below is an example:


To be clear, the synthetic query had no relationship with the inserted result we chose—the query didn’t appear on the webpage, and there were no links to the webpage with that query phrase. In other words, there was absolutely no reason for any search engine to return that webpage for that synthetic query. You can think of the synthetic queries with inserted results as the search engine equivalent of marked bills in a bank.

We gave 20 of our engineers laptops with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer 8 with Bing Toolbar installed. As part of the install process, we opted in to the “Suggested Sites” feature of IE8, and we accepted the default options for the Bing Toolbar.

We asked these engineers to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results, i.e., the results we inserted. We were surprised that within a couple weeks of starting this experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing. Below is an example: a search for [hiybbprqag] on Bing returned a page about seating at a theater in Los Angeles. As far as we know, the only connection between the query and result is Google’s result page (shown above).


We saw this happen for multiple queries. For the query [delhipublicschool40 chdjob] we inserted a search result for a credit union:


The same credit union soon showed up on Bing for that query:


For the query [juegosdeben1ogrande] we inserted a page of hip hop bling jewelry:


And the same hip hop bling page showed up in Bing:


As we see it, this experiment confirms our suspicion that Bing is using some combination of:
Internet Explorer 8, which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature
the Bing Toolbar, which can send data via Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program
or possibly some other means to send data to Bing on what people search for on Google and the Google search results they click. Those results from Google are then more likely to show up on Bing. Put another way, some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results—a cheap imitation.

At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality. We’ve invested thousands of person-years into developing our search algorithms because we want our users to get the right answer every time they search, and that’s not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there—algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results from a competitor. So to all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant search results, we encourage you to come directly to Google. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we'd like for this practice to stop.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

source : [url=http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html]http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html[/url]

[psycopk]

google sucks dude... google vadu pilla bacha programs rastunada?? microsoft vadu copy kottadaniki...
search percent padipotunte em cheyalo teliyatam ledu google gadiki.... microsoft meda padi edustunadu....

[kingmakers]

[quote author=psycopk link=topic=150345.msg1750858#msg1750858 date=1296610302]
google sucks dude... google vadu pilla bacha programs rastunada?? microsoft vadu copy kottadaniki...
search percent padipotunte em cheyalo teliyatam ledu google gadiki.... microsoft meda padi edustunadu....
[/quote]

baga frustration lo unatu unavu gaa....  @3$% @3$% @3$% @3$%

[psycopk]

[quote author=ChittiNaidu link=topic=150345.msg1750864#msg1750864 date=1296610353]
LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q  adi nijam aite ee patiki patents file chese vadu kada ......
[/quote]

anta dammu ledu.. cheap publicity kavali veelaki jagan 1day deeksha laga...

[infinity]

[quote author=psycopk link=topic=150345.msg1750858#msg1750858 date=1296610302]
google sucks dude... google vadu pilla bacha programs rastunada?? microsoft vadu copy kottadaniki...
search percent padipotunte em cheyalo teliyatam ledu google gadiki.... microsoft meda padi edustunadu....
[/quote]

psyco baa M$ is good for OS and search is not their area and GOOGLE rocks .. their engineering practices are also well known .. they contributed a lot to open source tools .. search lo vallani kottali antey chala kastam .. vallu prove chesaka kooda nuvvu illa antunavu antey emi chebtam baa

[kingmakers]

[quote author=psycopk link=topic=150345.msg1750871#msg1750871 date=1296610429]
anta dammu ledu.. cheap publicity kavali veelaki jagan 1day deeksha laga...
[/quote] @gr33d @gr33d @gr33d

nuvvu chepadhi MS gurnchee kadaa  @3$% @3$% @3$%

[chowdary9]

LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q

[infinity]

[quote author=ChittiNaidu link=topic=150345.msg1750876#msg1750876 date=1296610500]
@3$% @3$% @3$% @gr33d @gr33d @gr33d
[/quote]

Chitti nuvvu M$ support aa ?? psycopk baa M$ fan ani telusu nuvvu kooda na ?? there is a difference between legal and ethical ..what M$ is doing is not ethical ..

[psycopk]

[quote author=infinity link=topic=150345.msg1750880#msg1750880 date=1296610530]
psyco baa M$ is good for OS and search is not their area and GOOGLE rocks .. their engineering practices are also well known .. they contributed a lot to open source tools .. search lo vallani kottali antey chala kastam .. vallu prove chesaka kooda nuvvu illa antunavu antey emi chebtam baa
[/quote]

em prove chesaru mama?? guddalo dammu unte patent file cheyamani chepu...
microsoft entered late in game paln...anduke apple and google mobile and search lo baga peru techukunai...
MS is now fousing on these.... inka MS in apatam evari taram kadu....

[chowdary9]

[quote author=Jai Jagan link=topic=150345.msg1750885#msg1750885 date=1296610581]
@gr33d @gr33d @gr33d

nuvvu chepadhi MS gurnchee kadaa  @3$% @3$% @3$%
[/quote] LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q LoL.1q

[infinity]

[quote author=psycopk link=topic=150345.msg1750894#msg1750894 date=1296610646]
em prove chesaru mama?? guddalo dammu unte patent file cheyamani chepu...
microsoft entered late in game paln...anduke apple and google mobile and search lo baga peru techukunai...
MS is now fousing on these.... inka MS in apatam evari taram kadu....
[/quote]

baa Google kooda maa patent infringe chesaru ani anatam ledu .. vallu chepedi google search results lo user click chestuna links batti valla search results change chestunaru .. adi correct anatava ?? Search lo baga cheyali M$ kani Google lo emi chestunaro janalu dani batti kadu .. it should find better algorithms and not use what other search engines show

[psycopk]

[quote author=infinity link=topic=150345.msg1750891#msg1750891 date=1296610626]
Chitti nuvvu M$ support aa ?? psycopk baa M$ fan ani telusu nuvvu kooda na ?? there is a difference between legal and ethical ..what M$ is doing is not ethical ..
[/quote]

ethics gurinchi matlade tappudu google gurinchi chepaku...
recent ga google vadu ie lo oka bug kanukunadu..
MS vadu fix release chesaka public cheyi...users effect kakunda untaru ani request pedite..ee lucha google gadu publicity kosam danini leak chesadu.. inta cheap fellow google vadu...

[infinity]

[quote author=ChittiNaidu link=topic=150345.msg1750913#msg1750913 date=1296610803]
LoL.1q  no doubt google rocks.....but enti antey....innalu lenidi Bing meeda ela telsukunnadu...
[/quote]

aa post lo vadu chepadu kada chitti ippudu enduku doubt vachindo ..

[psycopk]

[quote author=infinity link=topic=150345.msg1750919#msg1750919 date=1296610871]
baa Google kooda maa patent infringe chesaru ani anatam ledu .. vallu chepedi google search results lo user click chestuna links batti valla search results change chestunaru .. adi correct anatava ?? Search lo baga cheyali M$ kani Google lo emi chestunaro janalu dani batti kadu .. it should find better algorithms and not use what other search engines show
[/quote]

ade data bing users clicks ni batti decide chesaru anukovachu ga??? do you think google is the only search engine??

[infinity]

[quote author=psycopk link=topic=150345.msg1750920#msg1750920 date=1296610884]
ethics gurinchi matlade tappudu google gurinchi chepaku...
recent ga google vadu ie lo oka bug kanukunadu..
MS vadu fix release chesaka public cheyi...users effect kakunda untaru ani request pedite..ee lucha google gadu publicity kosam danini leak chesadu.. inta cheap fellow google vadu...
[/quote]

adi kanukundi Google kadu oka employee of Google .. ayina vadi blog post lo vadu chepadu nenu chebithey M$ vallu vinaledu andukey public cheyalsi vachindi ani .. nenu chadivanu baa dani gurinchi ..