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Bing vs. Google, some (final?) thoughts: What was Matt Cutts thinking?

Feb 7, 2011 10:44 am by Kip Kniskern | 11 comments

All week we’ve been sorting through the many many blog posts, videos, and reports on the can of worms that Matt Cutts and the engineers at Google opened up last Monday when they went to Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan with “evidence” of Microsoft’s “cheating”. We won’t recap the whole story here, check out our initial posts if you need to catch up on the story so far.

(image snagged from Scoble)

However there are a few main points to make now that the volleys have been fired and the dust is settling. First, it’s pretty clear what Microsoft did (and didn’t do): they did not “copy” Google’s results, at least in the sense of “take a query, go see what Google says, and use that”. Instead, using (some questionably transparent, granted) opt in information gathered by the Bing Toolbar and “Suggested Sites” in Internet Explorer, along with perhaps some other indicators, they followed user queries across the web, and took note of where those users went next, more like “take a query, see where the user goes, and weigh that in to our results”.

So now the question has to turn to “What was Google’s intention in calling Bing cheaters in the first place?”. We think the most obvious answer is that these are engineers, they saw some behavior that they didn’t like or understand, they ran a few tests, and with results in hand they ran down the street to Danny Sullivan. Maybe they were just protective of their hard work (especially around search results for misspelled words), and didn’t really stop to think this through.

But Kara Swisher at All Things Digital seems to think this came from higher up, that this is a first volley set off by new CEO Larry Page.� Others have noted that Google’s infatuation with Bing underlines how seriously it is taking the upstart search competitor. The timing of the accusations was certainly suspect, coming on the day before a Bing sponsored search summit, but if Google expected the tech world to gasp and cry at the indignity of Bing’s actions, they didn’t. If anything, Google came off looking somewhat foolish and desperate. Was this a calculated act, a well designed PR stunt meant to take the heat off Google at Farsight 2011? Or is it more an indication of the “chaos” that reigns within Google, a poorly thought through reaction by some Google engineers to some perceived wrongdoing by a competitor?

Danny Sullivan followed up his initial post, this time explaining why Google was wrong in its accusations. But even though it’s pretty clear that Bing is not “copying Google”, that impression was made, at least to some. What’s even more clear is that if we didn’t know it before, we now know that Google is taking Bing very, very seriously.

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http://teusje.wordpress.com/ teusje
http://teusje.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/google-bing/
Ding
Ha Ha! Where do you get the “clear conclusion”???? You mean there are users searching for asdasdsdasftjyhrtga and then MSFT does “take a query, see where the user goes, and weigh that in to our results” and somehow “gets them the same results”….Wow, you must be really smart, but to average people this is called plain and simple copying.
- http://www.LiveSide.net Kip Kniskern – LiveSide.net
  Yes, there were users searching for “asdasdsdasftjyhrtga”, they were Google engineers. If Google had done the same experiment, but not had its engineers click on the links, those results wouldn’t have shown up in Bing.
  - Mario Albertico Magana
    So the Google engineers had to have had either Bing Toolbar or some other Microsoft component enabled and collecting data (e.g. Suggested Sites) for their results to impact Bing? 1) I’m surprised they would be using enough of either the Bing Bar or IE to notice this, 2) It should have been clear to them that when they began to use either or both, that they were submitting “Customer Experience Enhancement” data to Microsoft; of all people, engineers should have noted the permission dialogs.
    - http://memorythief.co.cc/ MemoryThief
      You would think that a Google engineer would use chrome that doesn’t have this permissions dialog for ‘Customer Experience Laghancement’ thus shouldn’t send statistics like that to M$, which would raise lots of suspicion to me…
      - Mario Albertico Magana
        My point exactly…
      - http://www.LiveSide.net Kip Kniskern – LiveSide.net
        The engineers set up 20 laptops, cleanly installed, specifically with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar included. They were well aware of the data collection capabilities, apparently they were “testing” to see how the collected data affected Bing results.
      - Saa
        Can Google detail to us what information their Search-bar takes from our computers and our browsing history?!?
        Anywa, i’m happy we have a serious competitor to Google.
majg
I think for those that are paying any attention, you’ll find that some of the mainstream media outfits didn’t provide a play by play after the “zOMG! Bing Cheats!” headlines. Not only did we ultimately hear about how some of this stuff is done behind the scenes, (toolbars etc), we learned that Google is a bit of a hypocrite (from their own engineers no less) and that the significance of this whole matter wasn’t very significant. Thanks for wasting our time Google.
So can we move on to this privacy stuff and why malware get’s spread via searches… and, of course, other things like that.
- Anonymous
  Spot on! Maybe in tech circles, most people realize how foolish Google was, but I’m sure the mainstream media (or lamestream) didn’t post any further updates b/c they’re such Microsoft bashers.
Ed
Ofcourse Microsoft copied Google. They will do anything to get their way, but one day the bubble WILL burst on Microsoft when Apple and Google take over.