Err... there are quite a few roundabouts in this city, and they have been there for a long time. Some people don't really learn.

Roundabouts need pretty good coordination between drivers to work their best. The outbound flow limits the inbound flow, and everything flows nicely; it really is quite an elegant solution. However, it only takes one driver in the circle who doesn't know what to do to screw the entire thing up for everyone.

He is laying out the facts as described in the followup article... you needn't get incredulous. This article is by the same person that wrong the original accusation article.

Public information cannot be trade secrets. Search results are public. Proprietary search algorithms are not.

The users are tracked because they used Bing Toolbar, which apparently has some opt-in tracking. It's a legit thing to criticize, but I'm not going to argue about that, since neither company has a stellar record in that regard.

Everyone needs to read this link. The PR dance is getting ridiculous, but this story is also making /. demographic's disappointingly irrational side show through. Seriously, both companies are trying to play with public opinion; the whole thing is consistently being mis-characterized to elicit reaction.

At least try to read about the facts

They got the related search term because it was entered into the Bing Toolbar search... That's like the search thing in Firefox where you can pick the actual search engine used. I think the tracking is part of 'Suggested Search' feature.

I don't actually agree with tracking completely, and I don't know how clear IE is about the tracking, but MS explanation is actually pretty sound.

Sigh... they are acquiring association data from the tracked users. These fake users entered 'delhipublicschool40 chdjob' into the Bing search bar, then clicked on a link to 'a Credit Union website'. If they were copying directly from Google, then 100% of honeypot search terms should have worked...

It's not like that explanation even makes MS look good per se, but I'm almost guaranteed to get modded down again.

Just want to add one thought experiment that hopefully illustrates my point:

Let's say Google did their same sting, but their employees always clicked the 5th result down instead of the top one. Then, if MS isn't lying, that could mean the 5th result shows up on Bing search. Consider that if these were real search terms, that would actually mean that Bing is providing the more useful result. So... how does a person copying provide a better answer deterministically if all that person is doing is copying?

Ok, I'm quite irked by this story, and I got modded troll a bunch of times by trying to point out that Google's experiment doesn't really support their accusation. I know some people will immediately label me a shill or apologist just for having a different opinion. What's stupid is I use Google search, and never Bing.

Anyways, the following is my understanding and some opinion. The secret knowledge of the search engine is the association of a search term and a result (usually a url). So to say that Bing is copying (I think 'cheating' might have the what was used, but copying is a lot of people's interpretation), implies they are acquiring Google's association data; conversely if the Bing search comes to the same result coincidentally, then they can't be 'cheating'. It wouldn't be that surprising if two search engines return same results for certain words. However, Google did their sting with fake terms... so obviously Bing is copying right?

So let's talk about their sting. They created (100?) honeypot search terms where a fake word would return a real link 'sss4yxyxy -> returns www.myresult.com'. Then they had 20 employees using IE and Bing toolbar w/ Google search and kept using these fake terms, then clicking the resulting link. Some time later, some of these fake terms return the same results on Bing.

A few things: Google employees opted into tracking w/ the Bing toolbar. (This is somewhat beside the point anyways, since Google isn't exactly in a position to point the finger about tracking.) Note that my understanding is that few of the (100?) honeypot terms actually worked on Bing.

The explanation from MS is that the Google employees gamed their user tracking mechanism to produce a result which makes it appear as if Bing is 'copying' Google. Basically they tracked the user search term, then the link they clicked through, and used this as part of the data for Bing. Google successfully gamed this because those terms are fake, and therefore the only data about them came from the sting.

So my opinion is that this isn't copying. If 100 of 100 honeypots showed up on Bing then that would support their accusation better. If their 20 employees only used Google normally from IE, without going through the toolbar, then that would strengthen the case. Without these, I have a hard time understanding how even the people at Google have rationalized their own accusation. Now maybe MS is lying and I'm a chump, but at least I'm taking the time to consider the evidence as presented.

Arg... I'm never going to get my point through the noise, so I'll just respond to you directly. The part that keeps getting omitted is that Google had its Bing tracked employees clicking on their fake result.

The accurate fast-food analogy is this: McDonalds creates a fake 'McRat Burger', then sends a group of its employees to Burger King to sign up for the King's Court Happy Club, part of which requires them to fill out surveys on fastfood habits (Bing Toolbar, and tracking). These employees are then told to consistently goto McDonalds and order the 'McRat Burger'. Burger King then receives survey results indicating that the 'McRat Burger' is hugely popular, and soon make the 'Rat Whopper Supreme' a top menu item. Now is that proof Burger King is copying McDonald's marketing data?

I'm not even saying MS isn't doing something wrong. My point is that this 'experiment' doesn't prove a thing, and to point the finger on this kind of evidence is extremely childish.

"When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing."

As I have pointed out elsewhere in the thread. Google gamed the Bing toolbar by having their monitored users actually click on the these fake results! This could easily be attributed to Bing Toolbar monitoring user behavior, instead of Bing using ranking information from Google.

I have noticed that whoever brings up 'fanboi' is usually the real 'fanboi'. Perhaps that should be a new internet meme.

"When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing."

This is from the source. Bing Toolbar is probably collecting user behavior. It's not necessarily being prioritized because it is the top result on Google, it is probably being prioritized because the monitored users actually clicked on those results. Maybe MS is just monitoring Google directly; I wouldn't be that surprised, but this story is pure troll.