Copying search results. I love the notion of that.
Somewhere in the world at this moment there's a person with the Bing Toolbar installed searching for something using Google. One of his results is to a website, for the sake of narrative lets suppose it's one of our own: A YC startup.
The searcher clicks to the YC startup, it's exactly what he's looking for, he converts.
Now, another searcher, using Bing by choice, searches that same term. That YC startup is in the results. The click is made, another conversion happens.
The first user consented to his click analysis by installing the toolbar.
The startup will surely agree that yes, we are a very good result for that term! We should show up on Bing, DDG, Google, Whatever! And we don't care how we get there!
The second user gets a result that's maybe ranked higher because of the first users click was noticed by Bing.
Google doesn't lose a customer because the second searcher was already on Bing to begin with.
Bing does nothing but analyze their own users' behavior (users of their toolbar) to deliver better results.
> The first user consented to his click analysis by installing the toolbar.
The toolbar says nothing about taking his data to improve Bing, only for Site-Suggestion which, to average user, is clearly a browser feature.
> Google doesn't lose a customer because the second searcher was already on Bing to begin with.
What about one who could have converted to Google if he search on Bing and didn't find a result?
Google couldn't lose a customer but there's no way Google would gain a conversion from Bing in this situation.
> Bing does nothing but analyze their own users' behavior
Assuming that this is a search result that Bing wouldn't have found by itself, then this "user behavior" wouldn't have occurred for Bing to capture had Google not exist.
Without Google each user can then probably only have behavior of clicking same old web site they have collected from long ago, there's no search engine for them to learn new relevant site easily.
The issue is simple..google uses all its heavy resources to rank that startup as #1. (good or bad).But bing just uses their toolbar to capture that information and rank them. They call this "cost cutting".Doesn't this sound cheap?
Somewhere in the world at this moment there's a person with the Bing Toolbar installed searching for something using Google. One of his results is to a website, for the sake of narrative lets suppose it's one of our own: A YC startup.
The searcher clicks to the YC startup, it's exactly what he's looking for, he converts.
Now, another searcher, using Bing by choice, searches that same term. That YC startup is in the results. The click is made, another conversion happens.
The first user consented to his click analysis by installing the toolbar.
The startup will surely agree that yes, we are a very good result for that term! We should show up on Bing, DDG, Google, Whatever! And we don't care how we get there!
The second user gets a result that's maybe ranked higher because of the first users click was noticed by Bing.
Google doesn't lose a customer because the second searcher was already on Bing to begin with.
Bing does nothing but analyze their own users' behavior (users of their toolbar) to deliver better results.
I find controversy over this beyond absurd.