Google accuses Microsoft on search data

Kuching
Thursday, 3rd February 2011

Google has accused arch-rival Microsoft of plagiarising its internet search results in an 

attempt to narrow the big lead  that Google still holds in the highly profitable search business.
Matt Cutts, head of search quality at Google, called the Microsoft practice “crazy”, and 
challenged the company to reveal  how much data it had collected from Google users and how
this was being used to determine results on its own Bing  search service. 


The dispute broke out after Google released the results of a test it carried out to try to show
 that Bing was copying its results.The software group did not deny the claims directly, but said
 that Google’s allegations were based on “a few outlier examples”. It also claimed that using 
data about what internet users did on Google to help refine its Bing service reflected general 
practice on the web, where internet services learn from wider online behaviour. 


It posted dummy results on the Google search engine in response to deliberately garbled 
queries. When carried out  later on Bing, the queries returned the same dummy responses,
Mr Cutts said. Microsoft had captured the data about searches on Google through its Internet 
Explorer 8 browser and toolbar, which send details of “clicks” back to Microsoft  when users 
accept certain settings on the Microsoft software, he added. Harry Shrum, the executive in 
charge of Microsoft’s search service, sought to brush off the accusations. 

“It’s not like we actually copy anything. We are learning from the data that customers share 

with us,” he said.  “The reason the web works is [due to] that collective intelligence.”