1. Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it
By now, you may have read Danny Sullivan’s recent post: “Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results” and heard Microsoft’s response, “We do not copy Google's results.” However you define copying, the bottom line is, these Bing results came directly from Google.
I’d like to give you some background and details of our experiments that lead us to understand just how Bing is using Google web search results.
It all started with tarsorrhaphy. Really. As it happens, tarsorrhaphy is a rare surgical procedure on eyelids. And in the summer of 2010, we were looking at the search results for an unusual misspelled query [torsorophy]. Google returned the correct spelling—tarsorrhaphy—along with results for the corrected query. At that time, Bing had no results for the misspelling. Later in the summer, Bing started returning our first result to their users without offering the spell correction (see screenshots below). This was very strange. How could they return our first result to their users without the correct spelling? Had they known the correct spelling, they could have returned several more relevant results for the corrected query.
This example opened our eyes, and over the next few months we noticed that URLs from Google search results would later appear in Bing with increasing frequency for all kinds of queries: popular queries, rare or unusual queries and misspelled queries. Even search results that we would consider mistakes of our algorithms started showing up on Bing.
We couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on, and our suspicions became much stronger in late October 2010 when we noticed a significant increase in how often Google’s top search result appeared at the top of Bing’s ranking for a variety of queries. This statistical pattern was too striking to ignore. To test our hypothesis, we needed an experiment to determine whether Microsoft was really using Google’s search results in Bing’s ranking.
We created about 100 “synthetic queries”—queries that you would never expect a user to type, such as [hiybbprqag]. As a one-time experiment, for each synthetic query we inserted as Google’s top result a unique (real) webpage which had nothing to do with the query. Below is an example:
By now, you may have read Danny Sullivan’s recent post: “Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results” and heard Microsoft’s response, “We do not copy Google's results.” However you define copying, the bottom line is, these Bing results came directly from Google.
I’d like to give you some background and details of our experiments that lead us to understand just how Bing is using Google web search results.
It all started with tarsorrhaphy. Really. As it happens, tarsorrhaphy is a rare surgical procedure on eyelids. And in the summer of 2010, we were looking at the search results for an unusual misspelled query [torsorophy]. Google returned the correct spelling—tarsorrhaphy—along with results for the corrected query. At that time, Bing had no results for the misspelling. Later in the summer, Bing started returning our first result to their users without offering the spell correction (see screenshots below). This was very strange. How could they return our first result to their users without the correct spelling? Had they known the correct spelling, they could have returned several more relevant results for the corrected query.
We couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on, and our suspicions became much stronger in late October 2010 when we noticed a significant increase in how often Google’s top search result appeared at the top of Bing’s ranking for a variety of queries. This statistical pattern was too striking to ignore. To test our hypothesis, we needed an experiment to determine whether Microsoft was really using Google’s search results in Bing’s ranking.
We created about 100 “synthetic queries”—queries that you would never expect a user to type, such as [hiybbprqag]. As a one-time experiment, for each synthetic query we inserted as Google’s top result a unique (real) webpage which had nothing to do with the query. Below is an example:
We gave 20 of our engineers laptops with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer 8 with Bing Toolbar installed. As part of the install process, we opted in to the “Suggested Sites” feature of IE8, and we accepted the default options for the Bing Toolbar.
We asked these engineers to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results, i.e., the results we inserted. We were surprised that within a couple weeks of starting this experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing. Below is an example: a search for [hiybbprqag] on Bing returned a page about seating at a theater in Los Angeles. As far as we know, the only connection between the query and result is Google’s result page (shown above).
As we see it, this experiment confirms our suspicion that Bing is using some combination of:
- Internet Explorer 8, which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature
- the Bing Toolbar, which can send data via Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program
At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality. We’ve invested thousands of person-years into developing our search algorithms because we want our users to get the right answer every time they search, and that’s not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there—algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results from a competitor. So to all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant search results, we encourage you to come directly to Google. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we'd like for this practice to stop.
2. Ubuntu Unity Plays a Frustrating Shell Game
The upcoming new Unity shell design for the next release of Canonical's Ubuntu 11.04 could change the face of the popular Linux desktop as we know it. Canonical creator Mark Shuttleworth is pushing the change to Unity while other Linux distros are rolling into GNOME 3. Linux Picks this week takes a look at this new desktop shell for Ubuntu. I have been using the Unity edition Canonical released for netbooks in its Ubuntu 10.10 Remix edition on both my small-screen netbook and wide-screen notebook.
3. Help wanted: Google hiring in 2011
2010 was a huge year for Google. Many of our big bets—on mobile, display advertising, the cloud and more—really started to pay off. Amazingly, Android now runs on over 100 devices with more than 300,000 activations each day. Chrome has at least 120 million active users and it’s growing quickly. Last year more than 1 million businesses switched to Google Apps and embraced its 100% web approach. And we’ve made search faster than ever, even when you’re on the go.
But it wasn’t just a growth year for our products—the company grew as well. In 2010 we added more than 4,500 Googlers, primarily in engineering and sales: second only to 2007 when we added over 6,000 people to Google.
I love Google because of our people. It's inspiring to be part of the team. And that's why I am excited about 2011—because it will be our biggest hiring year in company history. We’re looking for top talent—across the board and around the globe—and we’ll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science: like building a web-based operating system from scratch, instantly searching an index of more than 100 million gigabytes and even developing cars that drive themselves. There’s something at Google for everyone—from geo, to enterprise, to video—with most of the work done in small teams, effectively working as start-ups. (The average number of software engineers on a project at Google is 3.5.) That’s why the vast majority of our people stay with us, building their careers and taking on new challenges within the company.
I joined Google more than eight years ago—when we had barely 500 employees and still used Outlook for email and AIM for chat—and while there have been many changes, Google is still the same entrepreneurial company it was when I started, encouraging Googlers to take on big ideas and high-risk, high-reward opportunities.
If you think you want to join the team, check out google.com/jobs.
4. Anonymous on UK Arrests: This Means War
"Dear UK government," the ominous letter begins. "It has come to our attention that you deemed it necessary to arrest five of our fellow anons for their participation in the DDoS attacks against PayPal, Mastercard, and others, that have been carried out in our name in retaliation for those organizations' actions against WikiLeaks ... we take this as a serious declaration of war ... " The icy-cool shades of Alan Moore and George Orwell are downright chilling: a dystopian world at war with rebels over secretive, out-of-control, downright dictatorial governments.
5. Egyptian Government Executes Nationwide Internet Blockade
As anti-government protesters take over the streets in Egypt, the country's government has reportedly cut off most Internet and cellphone service. Cairo has labeled its crackdowns on the protests as a response to restore public order. However, critics say Egypt's cutting of communications is an attack on free speech. "I do not see how shutting off the entire mobile phone network and Internet does anything except prevent the Egyptian people from knowing what is going on and preventing them from acting together," Milton Mueller, a Syracuse professor, told TechNewsWorld.
6. Sony's Latest Pocket PlayStation Packs Dual Cams, Quad-Core Chip
Sony Computer Entertainment has disclosed further details about the PlayStation Portable 2, nicknamed the "Next-Generation Portable," or NGP, at a press conference in Tokyo. The NGP will have a 5-inch OLED front display and a multitouch pad in the rear, two thumbsticks, front and rear cameras, three motion sensors and access to the PlayStation Network. Owners will be able to play PSP titles, "mini" PlayStation games, PS1 classics; video and comics from the PlayStation Store, Sony said.
7. Facebook Puts HTTPS Security Guard on Full-Time Duty
Facebook announced new measures Wednesday aimed at improving users' security when visiting the site. The news came with an intriguing twist: Mere hours prior to the announcement, it was revealed that the Facebook fan page of the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was compromised by a hacker. While some online skeptics linked Facebook's new security features -- broader use of the HTTPS protocol and a new form of authentication -- to the Zuckerberg hack, at least one security expert discounted that connection.
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