Get in the frakkin’ ring! Oh yeah, it’s definitely on now, because Google is accusing Microsoft of “cheating” and “copying” search results.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this: Bing cheating, copying Google results,” angry Google fellow Amit Singhal claimed on his Twitter feed.
The controversial accusation was made after Google executed a sting operation to positively identify copied “digital bait” in Bing’s search algorithm.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft denies the charges, accusing Mountain View of engaging in a “spy-novelesque stunt” to falsely prove that Bing was lifting results.
“It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a backhanded compliment,” Microsoft search executive Harry Shum harrumphed in a rather snarky statement.
“But it [really] doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.”
Meanwhile, Jake Hubert – an obviously calmer Google spokesperson – weighed in on the controversy, noting that the corporation was quite “proud” of its search engine quality and capabilities.
“We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there, from Bing and others – algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results copied from a competitor,” he added.
(Via SearchEngineLand and Mercury News)
