Is BING cheating and does it matter?
Created on Thursday, 14 April 2011 19:57 Published Date Hits: 403
The story of the moment is one which Danny Sullivan broke where a Google sting revealed that BING was gaming the relevancy in its search results based on information gleaned from those who used Internet Explorer as a browser in combination with the toolbar and some other settings.
The case revolves around some pretty hefty technical issues, as you can imagine but the bottom line is that BING, which has always been a matter of pride for Microsoft for doing things their own way, is really a Google slave. This is more serious than you can imagine.
Google Caffeine, for instance, was a direct response to the implementation of BING. Competition drives innovation at a much greater rate than consumer demand in what essentially is a closed market (and the Old Soviet Union model of retail shopping is a conclusive argument about that). BING’s copying of Google leaves a gap in the market in terms of competing search technologies.
I hope that given sufficient publicity Microsoft will be able to wipe the egg from its face and simply focus back on finding ways to nip at Google’s heels maintaining both an alternative to Google and keeping the latter sharp and focused on quality search results which benefit both consumers and webmasters alike.
