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Industry analysts have said that Google’s recent accusations against Microsoft’s Bing search engine are "silly" as it would be almost impossible to use the supposedly stolen data in a meaningful way.
According to MacWorld, even by studying Google’s search results in detail, Microsoft would struggle to find Google’s secret search algorithms. Even so, experts have stated that Microsoft would be unlikely to want to mimic Google anyway, as it wants a search engine of its own. Gord Hotchkiss, from digital marketing provider Mediative said: "This whole thing is a little silly".
Earlier this month, Google revealed evidence that Bing had allegedly been using Google’s search results and using their users’ data. They set a trap by adding obscure search results to fictional words, shortly afterwards, Bing’s search results began to match that of Google’s. Google said that this was evidence of cheating, whereas Microsoft countered that the information it collects comes from thousands of different sources, and that the data was skewed by Googles usage of artificial queries.
The criticisms have left Google in a somewhat bad light. "Google isn’t used to having competition. You look at this incident and you wonder why they are doing this. It feels amateurish in a way, a kind of ‘they’re not playing fair’ attitude," said Charlene Li, founder of research firm Altimeter Group.
