Google accused Bing of stealing search results

    I recently became interested in a debate which happened at the beginning of this year. Google was accusing Bing of stealing their results, and proved it extensively.

    It all started with tarsorrhaphy - an eyelid procedure I would never spell correctly without directly copying it. An interesting mispelling, "torsorophy", returned the correct result on Google.
  Later, Bing started showing results for "torsorophy" - without the corrected spelling. Hm.

    Torsorophy wasn't the only case where Bing seemed to be imitating Google. Google found many cases where Bing had the same top search result as Google as well as cases where they saw what they would think of as quirks of their own system showing up in Bing's results. Hm.

    Google decided to run an operation to prove Bing's result-theft: they made certain queries no one would type return certain search results. For example, "hiybbprqag" returned a result about Wiltern seating tickets. A few days later, Bing showed the same result for "hiybbprqag". This effect was mirrored with several other of the 100 seed searches, such as "mbzrxpgjys", "indoswiftjobinproduction", and "delhipublicschool40 chdjob".


    Bing was very quick to deny the accusations and in fact accused Google for trying to catch their hand in the metaphorical cookie jar. Bing claims it was using data from optional features to improve its experience, in much the same way a lemonade stand owner could claim he was using data from similar 'optional features' to find out what the recipe of a competitor is and use that in place of his own.


    Google removed the code used to seed the searches, stating it had never had the ability to control searches before and had no plans to keep this ability.



    As for who I side with, that's pretty much clear. I'm a Google person in a Google family, and even if I wasn't I doubt I would approve of what amounts to stealing the lemonade recipe. Admittedly, Bing isn't stealing the recipe, but it's quite literally stealing the results - it's like stealing lemonade from your competitor and then selling it as your own, even though you know it's not.

    Bing quite conveniently now shows a 'spelling suggestions' message for torsorophy, one very similar to Google's. What's worse is that Bing isn't even doing this in a way Google can retaliate against - it's not as though Google can block anyone who uses Bing Toolbar or has Suggested Sites enabled! I don't believe Bing poses a serious threat to Google as of yet, however: Google's stock is currently worth nearly twenty-five times as much as Bing's!

    However, I certainly don't approve of theft and this is theft on a level incomparable to any common form of theft. Bing is heisting diamonds from the Google museum and is outright denying it. This practice is not fair or moral and it should stop now. As Google put it: Innovation is fair game, but theft is not innovation.