"Google set up a sting operation. For the first time in its history, Google crafted one-time code that would allow it to manually rank a page for a certain term

It then created about 100 of what it calls “synthetic” searches, queries that few people, if anyone, would ever enter into Google.

These searches returned no matches on Google or Bing — or a tiny number of poor quality matches, in a few cases — before the experiment went live. 

The only reason these pages appeared on Google was because Google forced them to be there. There was nothing that made them naturally relevant for these searches.

When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing."

Thoughts anyone?

Edit: original source = http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914

Nothing new, this is how MS does things.  Remember when they had to redo some of the code for Office because it was directly stolen from another program?  That is their MO.

On another note MS should concentrate on fixing current software: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/01/microsoft-security-flaw-puts-million-internet-users-risk/

Internet users across the world are at risk of being hacked due to a massive security flaw in Internet Explorer, according to a Microsoft announcement.

The flaw, which affects all versions of the popular web browser, puts 900 million people across the globe at risk of being hacked and will require an interim patch update while Microsoft prepares a long term solution.

In a security advisory announcement made on Friday, the tech giant highlighted scripting vulnerabilities that affected all versions of its Windows operating system. The company maintains that no attacks have yet been reported.

“The main impact of the vulnerability is unintended information disclosure,” said Angela Gunn, a Microsoft representative told online technology site Tech Eye. “We're aware of published information and proof-of-concept code that attempts to exploit this vulnerability, but we haven't seen any indications of active exploitation.”

According to the statement, the vulnerability would allow a would be attacker to plant code that triggers malicious scripts to run which could collect private information such as e-mails and passwords, while sending the user to fake sites without their knowledge.

All users are advised to visit the Microsoft Security Response Center to follow the situation and download the fix.

Please  excuse my drunken-ness, but will it ever make a difference?

No.

People will continue to rant about Sony DRM, or note its failed inventions, and many of these peoples will support MS products.

No offense meant to anyone, just complaining about double-standards.

 I don't care because Steve Jobs protects me from all this crap.

What does Sony have to do with google or bing?

Sony search engine confirmed!

lol Bing.

But in all honesty, who cares? I mean they're just search engines and everyone uses Google anyway.

Nice sig.

Yeah... no. I don't believe that's accurate.

That've been sued several times because of patent infringements and things like that. But directly stealing code? Maybe I missed that.

OT: Who cares?

A search engine is a tool to help you find whatever you're looking for on the internet. So its using other search engines to accomplish that, I don't see the problem.

If MS is doing something wrong I'm sure Google will be taking this court.