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Bing Is Now Google

I liked Bing when it was giving me cash back on stuff. 😀

Didn't care so much for it after that. 🙁
 
Bing's image search is better and the maps are too. Looking at how Google came to this conclusion though, well, they were feeding searches into a Bing toolbar knowing that this sends the queries back to Microsoft for inclusion in search results.

Seems like Google was just gaming Bing for some cheap PR.
 
MarkXIX said:
Let me break up this dragon trend going on here before it gets out of control.
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haha thanks.




Hilarious to hear how almost no one uses it now they aren't offering money. I'm sure that had to have backfired on them.


Also, Nintendesert are you trying to tell me Bing maps is better than google maps? I'll have to check it out since I have never used Bing for maps but damn google maps is the best (true dat, double true).
 
Nintendesert said:
they were feeding searches into a Bing toolbar
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I've never used the Bing toolbar, but I doubt there's an option to set the toolbar to send your search query to Google.

It's pretty easy to catch this data without monitoring what the user enters in the page though. The URL after a search contains the search terms, and the next URL you go to is assumed to be the link you clicked, which they also assume was the most relevant item in the results. The toolbar doesn't need to capture anything other than the URL's you go to, and I'm sure the Google toolbar does the same. The only difference is Google says they don't perform the same analysis on the URL data they get from people who use Bing. There's nothing stopping them from doing this though.
 
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OCGuy, if you read the article, they make a pretty strong case that Bing is using their search results.
 
Kind of fitting really: Google scrapes the heck out of most of the Web, and Bing scrapes the heck out of Google. It's the Internet circle of life.
 
DrPizza said:
OCGuy, if you read the article, they make a pretty strong case that Bing is using their search results.
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And MS admitted to it. Their reply to Google was "so what?"


"Using them" and "copying google" is a pretty big difference. Google only proved that MS has indexed googles results, and only for purposely obscure searches.
 
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Eh, Google's being kinda shady in that they did some things that deliberately caused this to happen (used things that Microsoft openly admits they'll track and use).

Oh, and there's this:
Google has proudly claimed over the years that it had no such ability
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Taken from this part:
Ending The Experiment

Now that Google’s test is done, it will be removing the one-time code it added to allow for the honeypot pages to be planted. Google has proudly claimed over the years that it had no such ability, as proof of letting its ranking algorithm make decisions. It has no plans to keep this new ability and wants to kill it, so things are back to “normal.”

Google also stressed to me that the code only worked for this limited set of synthetic queries — and that it had an additional failsafe. Should any of the test queries suddenly become even mildly popular for some reason, the honeypot page for that query would no longer show.

This means if you test the queries above, you may no longer see the same results at Google. However, I did see all these results myself before writing this, along with some additional ones that I’ve not done screenshots for. So did several of my other editors yesterday.
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Hmm...
 
darkswordsman17 said:
Eh, Google's being kinda shady in that they did some things that deliberately caused this to happen (used things that Microsoft openly admits they'll track and use).

Oh, and there's this:


Taken from this part:


Hmm...
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They explicitly created results to test their theory. Now that they have their answer they are going to remove it (they claim). As long as it's removed, I fail to see the problem here.
 
Nintendesert said:
Bing's image search is better and the maps are too. Looking at how Google came to this conclusion though, well, they were feeding searches into a Bing toolbar knowing that this sends the queries back to Microsoft for inclusion in search results.

Seems like Google was just gaming Bing for some cheap PR.
Click to expand...

No, they had Bing toolbar installed, but were searching directly on google.com
 
BudAshes said:
We all know this is what microsoft does best.
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In all seriousness, this is pretty much how they've made all of their products. They take someone else's product and modify it.

MS Word- Ideas taken from WordStar and WordPerfect
Excel - Ideas taken from Lotus 123
Windows- taken from Apple (who got the idea from Xerox)
Windows Defender - purchased Giant Antispyware, rebranded it
Zune- ideas taken from the IPod
Internet Explorer - based off of open source Mosaic
XBox- ideas taken from the Sony Playstation
Kinect- idea taken from the Wii

I can't think of a single original product they've ever made.
 
the only BING thing I like is bing maps where it has bird's eye view... you can see so much better than overhead satellite (too many trees). Google street view is nice but if I want to scope out an area and surrounding streets, bird's eye can't be beat. "Is there parking at/near that restaurant?" "What's the house look like before we go check it out with the realtor..." "Is the area ghetto?" BING!
 
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