Microsoft says Google used click fraud to orchestrate Bing Sting

Microsoft is now accusing Google of using a form of click fraud to set up its Bing Sting, a stunt unveiled by the search giant at the Farsight 2011 tech conference in Silicon Valley.

Google on Tuesday grabbed headlines in the tech press by disclosing an FBI-like sting operation purporting to produce evidence that Bing is intentially and systematically copying Google search results.

Today, Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president for Microsoft's Online Services Division, fired back. Mehdi says Google's sting, in fact, was "rigged to manipulate Bing search results" through the use of click fraud -- the elaborate trickery scammers use to fake clicks on Web ads in order to get paid by advertisers.

"What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove?" asks Mehdi. "Nothing anyone in the industry doesn't already know."

Google senior engineer Amit Singhal told Technology Live that the search giant stands by its original allegations that Bing is a copy cat.

"At Google we strongly believe in innovation," says Singhal. "We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithm built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results copied from a competitor."

In an exclusive Technology Live interview, Bing Director Stefan Weitz elaborated on why Microsoft contends Google is the real cheater in this confrontation:

TL: So Google really blindsided you with this?

Weitz: It was a surprise, not so much the stunt itself. I was more surprised by the fact that it isn't intellectually honest. It's just not true.

TL: So what was manipulated?

Weitz: What Google did was clever, I'll give them that. They basically took a bunch of nonsensical words, like xlgr493, and then modified their own algorithm to point the search query for that particular word to a real site. So xlgr493 refers to kittycat.com.

Then about 20 of them went to their houses at night, and, probably over a glass of merlot, started using the Bing toolbar to query Google for that particular nonsensical word. Then the next day they showed that if you searched for that nonsensical word on Bing, the faked site would appear as the first result.

TL: And the first Bing result would be the same as the first Google result for the same nonsensical word?

Weitz: Yes. Google's engineers basically issued a bunch of queries to Google from the Bing toolbar for that nonsensical word. They already had tuned the Google search engine to display a certain link when it saw that nonsensical word. By using the Bing toolbar, and then clicking on that link, the data flowed through normal processes back to Microsoft as it should. From there the data gets analyzed against a thousand different signals, one of which is our ranker. There is no copying here at all.

TL: So the sting was set up knowing only your ranking signal would trigger, not any of the others?

Weitz: There were no other signals, nothing else to look up. They artificially created this association, and there was nothing else we could use to figure out what the user was asking for. So we pulled that one signal, which was the faked one from Google.

TL: Do you take this as evidence that Google will get more down and dirty about defending its turf now that Larry Page has replaced Eric Schmidt as CEO?

Weitz: At the end of the day, we're all a bunch of geeks competing, right. Everyone's competing hard and that's actually good for the users because, in the end, they get a great product.


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Google claims Microsoft is copying its search results

Google accused Microsoft on Tuesday of copying its search results for use in Microsoft's Bing, then the two companies bickered about it on stage at a San Francisco search conference.

Google, the dominant search engine, said Microsoft is using Internet Explorer 8 features to track what Google users are searching for, then copying those search results on its own search engine.

The Mountain View, Calif., company went so far as to conduct a "sting" operation, manually planting search results for gibberish terms. Those same results later showed up in Bing search results for the same gibberish.

On a company blog, Google said it wants Microsoft to stop the practice.

Microsoft acknowledged it uses IE8 and a Bing toolbar to track user information but said it's just one factor in determining Bing search results. Harry Shum, a corporate vice president for search at Microsoft, referred to Google's sting as a "spy-novelesque stunt."

The allegations were first reported Tuesday by the site SearchEngineLand.com. Later, Shum and Google principal engineer Matt Cutts argued over them on stage Tuesday at the Farsight 2011 conference in San Francisco. Their appearance, for a scheduled discussion on the future of search, was webcast.

The tiff underscores how competitive juices still run strong in search, which Google dominates with a 66.6 percent share of the U.S. market in December, according to comScore. By contrast, Microsoft had 12 percent and Yahoo, whose search engine Microsoft now runs, had 16 percent.

In the Farsight discussion, Cutts explained how Google determined Microsoft used the Bing toolbar and an IE8 "suggested sites" feature to track searches done on Google, then copy those results in Bing.

He confirmed that Google inserted fake search results on certain terms only to find them later on Bing.

"It's almost like a mapmaker that inserts a fake street and sees if that street gets copied or if a Yellow Pages inserts a fake number," Cutts said.

Shum did not deny that the Bing toolbar or IE8 features track data, adding that all search operations track customer behavior.

"We learn from our customers," Shum said.

"We have been very clear we use customer data. My understanding is other search engines also use a similar thing."

Cutts countered, "I'm not sure users realize that by installing the Bing bar or installing suggested sites on IE8 that those results are encrypted and sent to Microsoft."

Shum then criticized Google about online spam, saying, "I think Google, as an industry leader, would be responsible for a lot of spam we receive."

Google has been hit with privacy complaints that it tracks what people search for. By saying Microsoft is using its browser tools to track users, Google appeared to be trying to paint Microsoft and Bing with the same brush.

On Tuesday, Google issued a statement from Amit Singhal, a Google fellow:

"At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality. 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."

Microsoft also posted a blog item, from Shum, that said: "To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today's story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we'll take it as a backhanded compliment. But it doesn't accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience."

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