WOW! If M$ Can’t Beat Google, M$ Copies Google at Robert Pogson

It appears that Google has caught M$ in industrial espionage or theft of search results. Google set up a sting by creating nonsensical search results and verified that Bing copied them. Google’s Terms of Service include
“5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.”

M$ is all Gung-Ho to defend intellectual property but here they are caught, publically, stealing intellectual property, search results.

This should hurt M$ in many ways:

remind the public that M$ is evil,
Google can likely sue them quite seriously. Search is big business,
remind regulators that M$ does not take law seriously,
inform the public that M$ has inferior tech to Google and that M$ knows this,
could cause a restatement of earning for several years and
inform potential customers of cloudy services that M$ lacks integrity.

Just when I thought M$ was aware of its limitations, they surprise me by smash-and-grab on Main Street. I hope this matter goes to court so Groklaw can index the details of discovery.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

2 Responses to “WOW! If M$ Can’t Beat Google, M$ Copies Google”

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1 Richard Chapman Feb 1st, 2011 at 3:20 pm

Wow is right. I notice the Microsoft spin machine is Johnny-On-The-Spot and in high gear. They still haven’t figured out how to sound like normal people though… Oh, wait! They can’t sound like normal people when they use words like “innovation” and “leadership”.
2 lpbbear Feb 1st, 2011 at 5:21 pm

Doesn’t surprise me at all. For YEARS Microsoft has been the “me too” company. Anytime another company is having success… voila! Out comes the checkbook. A few billions here and a few zillions there, Microsoft comes up with yet another crappy product that is nothing more than a poor imitation of a competitors product. I’m not at all surprised that they got caught “borrowing” from Google in this instance. The only difference in this situation is that Google is big enough to do something about it and smart enough to to catch Microsoft in the act. I’m sure Microsoft has pulled the very same crap against other competitors for years. Its just that those others never looked hard enough.

I sincerely hope that Google runs with this as hard and long as possible and it does an incredible amount of damage to slimy Microsoft’s store bought PR image.