I’m not an expert in plaguerism and intellectual property legislation, but Bing using Google’s search results for its users, seems to sit very much in a grey area. We all have access to Google search, we can add it to our websites and blogs free of charge as a plugin. But to allegedly steal it because you can’t do better, is just wrong!
Google suspected that Bing was returning Google search results in the Bing search engine. So they set up a “test” to confirm that their suspicions were correct.
Google’s official blog posted this article yesterday: Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results – and denies it.
Basically, Bing have been caught scraping Google Search results. No wonder they have picked up some market share since their launch in 2009.
I don’t particularly feel sorry for Google, they’re a massive conglomerate and can definitely fight their own battles without my input, but I’m not a fan of taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. And that’s how I see this. Google does it better. Bing tried to come in and take some of their market share. They couldn’t, so they resorted to cheating.
There’s only one word for that. Embarrassing!
What do you think?