According to recent reports Google has been monitoring Bing search results and is now making the claim that Bing is almost certainly copying Google’s search results. Google claims that Bing has been monitoring what people are searching for on Google and the websites that people select when reviewing Google’s results and then using that information to make improvements to their own search results.
Bing is not denying the claims and has admitted to using customer search data. Directors of Bing’s search engine claim that the Google experiment was a “spy-novelesque stunt” and is defending the use of user activity to influence search results on Bing. Bing VP Harry Shum stated yesterday:
“It’s not like we actually copy anything. It’s really about, we learn from the customers — who actually willingly opt-in to share their data with us. Just like Google does. Just like other search engines do. It’s where we actually learn from the customers, from what kind of queries they type — we have query logs — what kind of clicks they do. And let’s not forget that the reason search worked, the reason web worked, is really about collective intelligence.”
What are your thoughts? Is Bing effectively copying Google’s search results or is this type of collection of data fair game?