Earlier this week, we covered the Bing-may-be-stealing-Google-results on Crunch.
Nate Silver has an interesting perspective on How Much Does Bing Really Borrow From Google? in his New York Times piece.
In his article, Nate attempts to provide some mediation in the issue:
Let me try to referee this dispute. I’m not going to weigh in on the legality or even necessarily the ethics of this — I’m just trying to consider what makes for better search.
Generally speaking, Microsoft has said that Google’s results are simply one of many that they use in providing results to Bing users.
Nate’s statement on this particular statement boils down to two statements:
- ” Not all inputs are necessarily equal,” which asserts that Google’s results are weighted more heavily than inputs.
- “It is problematic for Microsoft to describe Google results as just one of many “signals and features’,” simply because Google’s business is search and their results are more than a simple signal and feature.
Compelling.
It’s obvious that his thoughts slant in the direction that Bing is piggybacking more on Google than other “signals and features.” I don’t disagree with that.
The thing is, I think many people are looking at this issue and treating Bing as nothing more than a portal to Google’s own results, but that’s incorrect.
It’s more complex than that.
Microsoft is competing with Google in the search space and is attempting to provide a richer, more relevant search experience and they are using Google’s results in order to achieve that.
The knee-jerk response to this is to say that “well I could write a great search engine if I used Google’s results, too!” But that’s not really accurate.
If Bing is actually using some of Google’s results in order to filter out less relevant results in conjunction with other “signals and features,” then they could very well be providing a richer search experience.
The question then is not whether or not Bing is copying Google’s results (because it’s been demonstrated that they are), but it’s a question of whether or not their approach is ethical.
Honestly, if I was in a position in which I could legally leverage competitors data against them to try and build a better product, I’d do it.
Competition fosters innovation.
Miles says
One thing to note, is that Google has released all of the publicly available data they provide _to the public license free_.
It still may not be truly ethical, but Google has made it hard on themselves to have a strong reason to complain.
Tom McFarlin says
Agreed. Good stuff, Miles.