Microsoft plagarizing Google?

[perpetualponder]

Google has apparently discovered that one of the inputs Microsoft uses to tune their search engine Bing is what people click on in response to Google searches. Microsoft has access to this data via their control of the Internet Explorer browser and the Bing toolbar. Google discovered this with a simple honeypot: tweaking Google search to give

Comments

[petercooperjr]

When I heard this today, I think I had similar thoughts. I'm thinking that while Google's algorithms may be patentable (not that they would, as I think keeping them a Trade Secret is better for them), and the code that implements them may be copywritable, I'm thinking that their current results are basically just an uncopywritable idea. The pages don't involve a "creative work", and in fact even the entire Google index isn't really a creative work; just the algorithm that made it is. And as you surmise, I also surmise that Google's Legal department doesn't think that they would win a court fight. Or at least, they think that they have enough of a chance of losing that they don't want to risk it, and that has to be quite a big chance since they stand to risk quite a bit if it becomes commonplace for competitors to copy their results.

I'm very much reminded of the Philip Columbo story. There are certainly differences in this case, of course, but it's interesting that Copyright law really isn't designed to protect work done in

[perpetualponder]

1. Are you suggesting that someone could legally make a search engine that returned completely identical results to Google but with another set of ads? If that was legal, why haven't we heard about them before? If this was done client-side there would be no way for Google to tell the difference between real users and uses with an alternate set of ads overlaid and hence no way for them to block the fake traffic. I'd be willing to bet that copying Google's index wholesale would be an open and shut case

[petercooperjr]

1) If I wrote a browser plugin (via the various methods that most modern browsers have to run a user-supplied javascript on a site on each visit), and what that plugin did was replace Google's ads on Google's searches with my own ads, I'm not sure what Google could do about it. Certainly similar scripts which just block the ads are common. It might be a violation of a "Terms of Use" document that Google puts on their web site, but I'm not sure what legal force that might have. I remember reading a while back about the EFF arguing that violating a site's terms of use shouldn't fall under "computer hacking" criminal charges, and I'm not sure where that's gone. But I don't see how giving someone else the capability of changing a site is any more a copyright violation than the fact that a photocopier lets me copy a book that I have access to and scribble all over it