Google accuses Microsoft of stealing results. Drama ensures.

[dizekat]

Google accused Microsoft of stealing it's results.

Drama ensured.

My take on the issue: bing toolbar, as advertised, processes user clicks and visit time to calculate relevance between pages and words. Google exploited this to create relations between made up words and random pages, using their search result page as to boldly proclaim that Bing is copying Google's results (which is something that various shitty spam sites used to do). It wasn't easy work exploiting this, either. Even for the made up words that nobody else searches for, they had to click for days to create relations in 7 cases out of 100.

The reason Google is afraid of toolbar is: suppose user searches on Google for something, with toolbar installed, and suppose Google makes a mistake and the top result is a spam page which users immediately leave, whereas the 5th page of the results is very relevant and users spend a lot of time on it. In such case Bing will learn from Google's mistake and put that page first. For some reason Google appears to believe that is entitled to sole ownership over your behaviour online.

[Regret]

Even attempting to analyze the situation from our point of view is futile.

It carries same merit as deducing who did most damage in game from a chat log.

[dizekat]

Even attempting to analyze the situation from our point of view is futile.

It carries same merit as deducing who did most damage in game from a chat log.

you can still deduce who is trolling from a chat log, though...

[Regret]

you can still deduce who is trolling from a chat log, though...

"trolling" being as subjective as "who is making me angry".

It's very easy to label entities you don't like as trolls.

[Caydr]

That guy that always deletes my posts for example.

[Neddie]

Usually I find most participants are trolling. I think this is probably the case in regards to the original post; Microsoft and Google are engaged in a crucial business conflict across markets, so scraps like this make perfect sense.

[dizekat]

Usually I find most participants are trolling. I think this is probably the case in regards to the original post; Microsoft and Google are engaged in a crucial business conflict across markets, so scraps like this make perfect sense.

Ya. Had they actually have some sort of case that could convince a person who's looking into it for more than few minutes, they'd go to court with this, but as such its PR all the way. I'm a little bit surprised to see google going so low, but that kind of PR is something to expect from a company which says "don't be evil" is their motto.

[SpliFF]

Posturing and weasel-words aside there is a fundamental issue here. Who owns the output of a webpage?

It's long been held that if you compile a list and publish it the list has a degree of copyright protection. It's been through court many times on issues such as the republishing of train timetables, tv guides, weather data, football scores, etc.

Microsoft are essentially advocating that the results of Google searches can be mined as long as there is an intervening activity (a user click). It's a pretty thin argument and if upheld in court would essentially legalise data mining for the purpose of republication. If not upheld then Microsoft would be making users party to copyright infringement as the user is sending Googles data to Microsoft with the express purpose of commercial use and republication (and the user has explicitly agreed to do this).

[dizekat]

Posturing and weasel-words aside there is a fundamental issue here. Who owns the output of a webpage?

It's long been held that if you compile a list and publish it the list has a degree of copyright protection. It's been through court many times on issues such as the republishing of train timetables, tv guides, weather data, football scores, etc.

Microsoft are essentially advocating that the results of Google searches can be mined as long as there is an intervening activity (a user click). It's a pretty thin argument and if upheld in court would essentially legalise data mining for the purpose of republication. If not upheld then Microsoft would be making users party to copyright infringement as the user is sending Googles data to Microsoft with the express purpose of commercial use and republication (and the user has explicitly agreed to do this).

Well Google didn't go to court... and there is not a lot of the case assuming that all bing toolbar did was noting that user goes from a page with q=sdfgerg to a different page. You see, the Bing toolbar used the data that *user* was sending to Google (and which user also sent to that random website in question as referer). Microsoft could get the data from just the HTTP request made to that random website, and still be influenced by Google in same way.

It's more of - if you sell a recipe book, can you sue a shop for it's "frequently bought with this item" lists precisely replicating ingredients list on your recipe in some few edge cases? If you made up really weird recipes to prove your point? If it only happened less than one time out of 10? I'm sure microsoft's lawyers can make way better defence still. Maybe Google wouldn't even want to win the case, given how it can backfire at them as a precedent, when it comes to Google itself processing all sorts of lists.

I've suspicion that their own toolbars, or chrome, can do exact same thing, or will do exact same thing in the near future. Why? Because you need to introduce human input back into the system. Microsoft has huge advantage on it, because it can ignore all the unlicensed windows and have caps on how much data to get from a user. So that it would be extremely expensive to manipulate lol.

[SpliFF]

Those arguments, and all arguments put forward by Microsoft, are simply splitting hairs over the process. Nobody is disputing the outcome, that is, results from one product are migrated into a competitors product.

I don't believe copyright law makes any distinction between information copied using a photocopier, scanner, or pen. It only makes distinctions based on "fair use" which covers the quantity and purpose of the copying. Microsoft can't argue there is no copying taking place because reasonable proof exists so they only have fair use to fall back on. Googles tests show their search results are migrated to Microsofts public product so most fair use arguments like "research" can be easily dismissed.

That only leaves the quantity of results copied as an argument. Neither party has clarified exactly how much data is being copied but if it did go to court that's where the solid arguments would be.

I agree though if Google thought they would win in court, and if winning didn't jeopardise their own data sniffing activities they would already have initiated the case. Still, I don't think they are doing anything wrong by pointing out that Microsoft rank Googles own results above its own algorithms (ie, a user following a Google link is more important than the fact the search keyword has zero relevance to the content).

[BaNa]

I think you guys are missing the fundamental question here:

who uses bing toolbar anyway? and for that matter, bing?

are the search results that braindead fuckups (see questions one and two) click on relevant at all?

[SinbadEV]

I think you guys are missing the fundamental question here:

who uses bing toolbar anyway? and for that matter, bing?

are the search results that braindead fuckups (see questions one and two) click on relevant at all?

Bing is heavily promoted on television and is the default search engine for IE and Windows phones... as such I imagine it has a relatively high market share among muggles.

One nifty thing you might want to check out... while google maps+earth gives me a satellite imagery, street view and the occasional 3D models... but Bing Maps has high resolution aerial photography.

For example, My High School:

Google:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 00284&z=19 (in 3d)

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 2,,0,12.82 (street view)


Bing:

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=rjqjbh ... 7606&sty=b (bird's Eye)



ALSO: Isn't my HS awesome?

[Cheesecan]

Let m$ savor their small victory because they are still losing the war. Google makes things that brilliant young minds want to use to develop awesome stuff.

M$ makes things that less brilliant minds want to use to make their own lives easier..

[SpliFF]

With the exception of Xbox, Office and Win->Win upgrades I've found people don't generally "choose" MS products. It's more a case of it's on their computer so they use it. I've even met a number of people who didn't realise Windows was interchangeable from the hardware. Not only did they not choose it, they weren't even aware there was a choice.*

* Not that Apple are blameless, being the makers of the only mainstream desktop OS which is forceably locked to a brand of hardware.

[Cheesecan]

http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/38840 ... rties-.htm

Where I live the office suite is heavily discounted for students and I would imagine it's very popular among less techy students who don't know much about open office and free software.

M$ has nothing to compete with the allure of google platforms such as gwt, android, app engine etc. Even when M$ gives their products away for free on MSDNA, IT-students still prefer to use free software.

Apple is not really locked to hardware anymore unless you mean the fact that they use Intel CPUs exclusively(with good reason, AMD has been declining for several years now and could well be gone in another decade). But you can still run OS X on any CPU that supports the x86 architecture.

[SinbadEV]

Apple is not really locked to hardware anymore unless you mean the fact that they use Intel CPUs exclusively(with good reason, AMD has been declining for several years now and could well be gone in another decade). But you can still run OS X on any CPU that supports the x86 architecture.

technically true... but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%8 ... _OS_X.kext

[Caydr]

You can't just install OSX on a Windows PC and assume it'll work, most of your hardware probably won't since nobody with a penis uses or develops drivers for it. Well, that is, apart from the hardware trolls who make "Mac Compatible" versions (identical product; white trim). The 50% markup is a steal compared to buying OEM Apple parts.

Same deal for Linux, the only people who make anything Linux-compatible are niche manufacturers that know their market is too crowded so they appeal to the one community desperate enough for baseline functioning hardware, or major manufacturers (NV) who know an extra bullet point on a slide, no matter how relevant, will increase PR coverage among the most vocal internet users. And also FOSS game developers who wish AMD users would die so they'd have less work to do.

[dizekat]

actually, most of hardware works under Linux just fine, 'cause people write drivers for it. Doesn't apply to OS X though.
As for google, the google docs and the like are nonfree software on crack. Less free - in the liberty sense - than software you paid for.

As for allegations of stealing - just because the data found itself into bing - when deliberately forced into it by Google employees who had to click all day to get it there in less than one case out of 10 - does not constitute stealing. As for the why would bing return pages that do not contain the word - ever seen "those words only appear on pages that link to this page" when viewing google's cached copy?

[Cheesecan]

Same deal for Linux, the only people who make anything Linux-compatible are niche manufacturers that know their market is too crowded so they appeal to the one community desperate enough for baseline functioning hardware, or major manufacturers (NV) who know an extra bullet point on a slide, no matter how relevant, will increase PR coverage among the most vocal internet users. And also FOSS game developers who wish AMD users would die so they'd have less work to do.

Lol caydr you are a linux noob for certain. Wake up and smell the roses hun.

Linux runs on more hardware than Windows for a fact. The linux kernel has millions of drivers built into it. Hardware support from manufacturers is today commonplace, every single large pc component manufacturer that I know of has a linux driver team. You would not call Intel, AMD or Logitech niche manufacturers now would you.