Bing-Google Search Results discussion

Powerlord

Feb 10, 2011 18:58

Wow, Microsoft's getting brave. Not only has Windows 7 SP1 apparently gone gold (and will be available next week on MSDN, two weeks on Windows Update), but IE9 has an RC release now.

thethinman

Feb 10, 2011 19:17

@Powerlord Did you hear about the whole Bing ordeal?

Powerlord

@thethinman The Google-Bing thing™?

thethinman

Yep

Now that's brave. And stupid.

Prime reason I laugh at anyone who recommends working at Microsoft for the experience.

Powerlord

The crazy thing is that it makes a twisted form of sense.

thethinman

It is, but also dishonorable and disgusting.

For anyone who doesn't know: searchengineland.com/…

Arda Xi

We discussed that a while ago, I think

Apparently, Microsof thinks it's alright because "everyone does it" or something

thethinman

Feb 10, 2011 19:21

@ArdaXi Ha, my bad, not always on chat.

Powerlord

Oh, and I couldn't resist sticking the ™ symbol onto the end of Google-Bing thing™.

thethinman

@Powerlord I noticed :P

Given how Microsoft was born, I expected no better of them.

tzenes

@thethinman really?

thethinman

@tzenes Really what?

tzenes

you think its a) stupid, b) disgusting?

Powerlord

Feb 10, 2011 19:22

@thethinman I'm not sure how writing a BASIC interpreter for the Altair is related to the current topic... ;)

tzenes

First off, I don't particularly care for bing, but that irrelevant to the topic.

thethinman

@tzenes Stupid because they were bound to get caught and although I don't know what legal implications that has I'd assume getting caught would instantly make bing not worth it

tzenes

But on the subject, its both brilliant and the right thing to do

Arda Xi

@tzenes It's theft. Plain and simple.

tzenes

so there are no legal implications

and it is not theft

if you think its theft chances are you don't understand what it is they did

Arda Xi

Feb 10, 2011 19:23

@tzenes It's theft just as much as piracy is.

Brant

which is to say "not at all"?

tzenes

but they didn't steal search results

thethinman

@tzenes Disgusting? Because it's a blatant disrespect for another company and intellectual property. It is not their right to have access to that data.

tzenes

what?

Arda Xi

@tzenes They stole the rankings, and as such, the work Google put into their algorithm.

tzenes

Feb 10, 2011 19:23

do you actually know what happened?

@ArdaXi 100% wrong

thethinman

@tzenes I don't think it's theft, they haven't been sued or anything for it, am i right?

Arda Xi

@tzenes So they just happened to have the same result for the same honeypot query a dozen times?

tzenes

@thethinman So google gives the data away, so they have the right

Powerlord

@ArdaXi They used the links users clicked on after a search.

thethinman

I thought Google just pointed their finger at Microsoft and Microsoft kind of said "and, what's your point?"

tzenes

Feb 10, 2011 19:24

@ArdaXi you have to remember they used people following that honey pot

Arda Xi

@tzenes So just because my TV station airs series every day, I get to upload them to The Pirate Bay?

tzenes

they didn't steal google rankings

@ArdaXi I think your TV has different licencing than google

Arda Xi

Oh, so then I need to hook up a recording device to someone else's TV to get to upload the series to the Pirate Bay?

tzenes

its the station with the licencing not the actual tv

Arda Xi

@tzenes True. The station doesn't own the content they display. Google does.

tzenes

Feb 10, 2011 19:25

I forgot arguing with you is pointless

thethinman

@tzenes Didn't they just collect which of Google's results that customers liked most?

tzenes

@thethinman no

what they did was far more brilliant than that

what they did was track users habits on click throughs throughout the entire internet

Arda Xi

They had their toolbar capture results that Google user's browsers saw.

tzenes

it wasn't specific to google

Arda Xi

I know, but in effect, this is what they did.

tzenes

Feb 10, 2011 19:26

google was treated like any other site

Arda Xi

Basically, it amounts to scraping the entire web.

tzenes

what they did was examine the relationships between GET requires

which, if you're creating a search engine, is brilliant

not that google doesn't do the exact same thing

Arda Xi

While scraping the entire web is fine, it's a Very Bad Idea™ to do it with search engines.

tzenes

google toolbar also captures searching habits

which google uses to inform their search algorithms

thethinman

Using Google's data ... right? Assuming that data was legally available or they would've been nailed by now.

Brant

Feb 10, 2011 19:28

@ArdaXi why? it's just another source of data

Arda Xi

@Brant Because you're not just using data, you're using your competitor's implementation.

That's like saying copying a document isn't plagiarism because all you did was copy words.

You're not just copying the words, you're copying the order in which they are placed, too.

tzenes

if they just used googles algorithm their results wouldn't be nearly as good

Brant

well, to use the document analogy

tzenes

what they did is use users qualification of their algorithm

Mana

shrug So maybe the ethics were sketchy but was it actually illegal, what Bing did?

Brant

Feb 10, 2011 19:29

what MS was doing wasn't copying the words, they were copying the ideas expressed by the words. the result of their competitor's implementation, not the implementation itself.

thethinman

From how it's stated it clearly wasn't Google's intention to let something like this happen.

tzenes

which means they get far suprior results than just copying google

@Mana no

thethinman

@Mana it wasn't illegal I don't think.

tzenes

@thethinman google has done this for a long time

Mana

Okay.

tzenes

Feb 10, 2011 19:30

the difference here is that people dislike MS more than Google, so google can point a finger

Powerlord

Oh right, the Google Toolbar.

Mana

So then I don't really see why people are getting angry at MS for this. It was a pretty cool idea.

thethinman

@tzenes Yes, they get better results. But given Google's reaction to what Microsoft did it wasn't their intention to help companies like that.

tzenes

truth is MS pointed this exact same finger about 7 years ago and no one remembers it

Arda Xi

@tzenes Google scrapes Bing for search results?

thethinman

Feb 10, 2011 19:30

@tzenes So yeah, it's Google's fault for letting it happen.

tzenes

@thethinman I don't see how they could stop it

Powerlord

@ArdaXi Google has the same type tool MS does. It even has a similar name: Google Toolbar vs. Bing Toolbar.

Brant

@ArdaXi The __ Toolbar (Bing/Google) watches what page you're on, and then watches what page you visit next

tzenes

it wasn't like this was MS running queries against Google

thethinman

@tzenes Make it unavailable.

Arda Xi

Feb 10, 2011 19:31

@Powerlord @Brant That does not answer my question.

tzenes

@thethinman what I'm saying is they can't make it unavailable

because MS isn't scraping Google

thethinman

@tzenes Now that is something I don't get yet. Google made it sound like MS clearly observed some behaviour on Google sites.

tzenes

MS is asking users for their history

@thethinman Sure they made it sound that way, but that's not the case

Arda Xi

@tzenes How do you know that?

tzenes

that is pure fabrication in the form of implication

thethinman

Feb 10, 2011 19:32

So they browse history, look at what they searched on Google, then look at what they went to next?

Brant

Have you folks read this yet, BTW? Bing: Why Google’s Wrong In Its Accusations It's a lot more complicated than "Bing copies Google results"

Arda Xi

Are you an engineer at Microsoft?

tzenes

they implied that this was what IE was doing

thethinman

@Brant Thanks for the post.

tzenes

Actually if you look at what the data IE sends back, its no different for google than for any other site

in fact, if you look at other search engines you see the exact same behavior

let's say I take a domain name and map it to a php file which just calls google

thethinman

Feb 10, 2011 19:33

@tzenes Google's test showed a fluctuation in Bing results though, so there must have been a focus on Google, whatever MSes technique was.

tzenes

but I add a honeypot to my php file

you'll see that honeypot show up

even though there is no way MS is targeting my random computer

@thethinman no, there doesn't have to be a focus on google to produce that result

Arda Xi

That would be really, really, really dumb.

Brant

I highly recommend you read the article I linked above to get the context, but the key takeaway is "Bing isn’t just monitoring what happens at Google. It monitors what people do as they travel across the entire web." (Emphasis mine)

tzenes

their just has to be enough people going to the site

thethinman

@tzenes Hmmmm, let me think then.

Arda Xi

Feb 10, 2011 19:34

For Bing to blindly accept any kind of title, URL set it is given.

(Which is what it did in the case of the honeypot)

tzenes

bing accepts all the links that everyone clicks on, creates its relational graph and then weights the edges based on volume

thethinman

@tzenes So you're saying Google is so widely used that Bing changed because Google influences so much, rather than Bing specifically targeting Google?

4

@tzenes I know I'm being incredibly simple here.

tzenes

@thethinman YES

that is the crux of it

thethinman

@tzenes Aha, that's interesting. This seems less one-sided.

tzenes

Bing changed because so many god damn people are using google, that it causes anomolies in their edge weighting algorithms

Brant

Feb 10, 2011 19:36

That's what this article says as well

thethinman

Correlation doesn't imply causation, bitches. Google just took its first lesson in stats.

tzenes

remember, when google created the honey pots, they didn't just create honey pots, they also had people go home and click through to them on IE

Powerlord

Ah, but see, the crux of the issue is that Google specifically added fake search results for terms that had few or no matches. Then Google's Engineers installed the Bing toolbar, searched for these terms, and followed the links therein.

Arda Xi

So I can Bingbomb a link easily with a relatively popular site and Bing toolbar?

Brant

No, keep reading the page

Powerlord

Feb 10, 2011 19:37

@ArdaXi If it's a common term, it will likely have very little difference.

tzenes

I think they just used IE

badp

@tzenes hardly any people did that though

Brant

The clickstream data the Bing toolbar collects is only one of several signals the search engine uses to rank results, and even then it isn't used all the time if it's not a very common search term

tzenes

@badp but there were no other queries which contained the text

remember these honeypots where very low occurnces

so a couple hundred clicks from google engineers is likely to heaviliy weight those edges

Powerlord

@tzenes "We gave 20 of our engineers laptops with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer 8 with Bing Toolbar installed." -- Google

tzenes

Feb 10, 2011 19:39

they probably do some time averaging, so over time that effect will be deminished

thethinman

hmm

Powerlord

So, it's not just IE... you needed Bing Toolbar as well.

tzenes

@Powerlord 20 engineers, a dozen clicks each, we're talking about close to a thousand click throughs

I know IE sends some data back

Its possible Bing doesn't get that data unless you have the toolbar though

thethinman

Now what about this line, "Google alleges that Bing monitors what people search for on its site, if they have Internet Explorer equipped with certain features. Bing doesn’t dispute this."?

Now that makes the point confusing.

tzenes

they monitor all clickthroughs

searches are a subset of clickthroughs

thethinman

Feb 10, 2011 19:41

So Bing is saying that they do monitor Google relevant things, but not on purpose. It's just a part of the process? As in they're viewed like any other source and not specifically targeted?

Errr, I don't know if that made sense.

tzenes

no, I think you have it

they treat google like any other website

Brant

Yeah, that's pretty accurate.

thethinman

Hmmm, that's unfortunate.

Brant

It's just that so many searches are Google searches that, yeah, it kind of does flow through.

tzenes

the fact that google gets such an insane volume of traffic means that some search results are going to get copied over

thethinman

Feb 10, 2011 19:42

If MS did what I originally thought then I would still find them disgusting. But I consider them redeemed

C. Ross

... are we done with this? because it's awesome and I want to bookmark it

tzenes

@Cross the important parts

thethinman

@CRoss You mean this convo?

I'd call it done. I brought it up in the first place.

tzenes

anyway, the entire idea of clickstream data is brilliant, but I think its still unrefined

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