What an euphemism for copying?
Good one at that.
Only hours after accusations were released from Google saying Microsoft copies its method of finding links people search for, Google’s Matt Cutts and Microsoft’s Harry Shum were seated next to one another at the Farsight conference.
Following the accusation, it has been an argument of whether it is ‘copying,’ what Google believes, versus ‘listening to users,’ what Microsoft believes.
Google set a trap testing Microsoft to see if they were using browser data from Explorer. This would then update search results on Bing.
Shum was not happy with these allegations. He said that Bing and Microsoft gather their information like several other search engine: wherever the majority of users are clicking.
Cutts was not surprised by Shum’s remarks, but was still not satisfied with what he and his company found. He is most upset by the fact that Microsoft used browser click data instead of using clicks on Bing itself.
Prior to the claims of copying, Cutts walked around the University of California at San Francisco with his laptop which had fake searches made by Google, and the outcome which had the same results from the website Bing. This was the nail in the coffin for Cutts.
The two shared comments back and forth, but what has been said is final. Cutts and Shum probably will not be seated next to one another at the next conference the two attend.
Related:
Google accused Microsoft on Tuesday of copying its search results for use in Microsoft’s Bing, then the two companies bickered about it on stage at a San Francisco search conference.
Google, the dominant search engine, said Microsoft is using Internet Explorer 8 features to track what Google users are searching for, then copying those search results on its own search engine.
The Mountain View, Calif., company went so far as to conduct a “sting” operation, manually planting search results for gibberish terms. Those same results later showed up in Bing search results for the same gibberish.
On a company blog, Google said it wants Microsoft to stop the practice.