The story began after Google started noticing curious search results at Bing which caused them to suspect Bing was copying its results.Then then ran a sting operation to investigate further where they finally concluded that Microsoft was copying Google search results into its own search engine.


The issue was first reported Tuesday morning by the Search Engine Land technology news blog, whose editor Danny Sullivan was personally briefed by Google on the issue in recent days.

Here's the article

Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

An excerpt from the article

Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this.

As a result of the apparent monitoring, Bing’s relevancy is potentially improving (or getting worse) on the back of Google’s own work. Google likens it to the digital equivalent of Bing leaning over during an exam and copying off of Google’s test.

“I’ve spent my career in pursuit of a good search engine,” says Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow who oversees the search engine’s ranking algorithm. “I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book.”
There was detailed response on the official Google Blog by the aforementioned Amit Singhal

Official Google Blog: Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it

At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality. We’ve invested thousands of person-years into developing our search algorithms because we want our users to get the right answer every time they search, and that’s not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there—algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results from a competitor. So to all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant search results, we encourage you to come directly to Google. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we'd like for this practice to stop.

Bing at first seemed it wasn't denying the accusations but a few days later issued statements denying any cheating or copying...

The issue went back and forth

After Bing's Denial ( Bing Thoughts on search quality - Search Blog - Site Blogs - Bing Community ) came Google’s denial of Bing’s denial ( Official Google Blog: Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it )


Bing’s further denial ( Bing Setting the record straight - Search Blog - Site Blogs - Bing Community ) gave way to Google’s further denial of Bing’s denial (My thoughts on this week’s debate)


It was too funny to go unnoticed and Stephen Colbert made a skit of it on Comedy Central

Bing Gets Served - The Colbert Report - 2/2/11 - Video Clip | Comedy Central



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My thoughts on this issue are clear

In my eyes Microsoft IS infact stealing Google's result


It seems Bing is tracking Clicks of the user.BUT Bing knows that Google is the most used search engine.
It uses IE toolbar and harvests massive amounts of search results from its competitors' web sites with ordinary users as their proxy, and then uses that quietly collected data to update its own competing search engine.


Microsoft has done a masterful job at deflecting this criticism. They are pretending that Microsoft's users are fully aware that their browser toolbar searches

That they are claiming that the resulting effect of Bing imitating Google's search results is a fluke is a lie.

It's an abuse of their market leadership in the client browser space to try to make up for a poor market position in the search engine space.They have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar and they hope is that the majority of people will not understand how cunning they were being.

Its working isn't it?