It wouldn't be hard to write a generic parser to detect URLs that look like search queries, and it'd be a novel way to gain a lot of information from private indexes (stack overflow, twitter, lucene/solr setups, reddit, etc).
If this is what Bing is doing, then kudos to them for clever thinking, no foul play.
However, if the toolbar has any logic to specifically parse Google's URL syntax, or if they're filtering and correlating google.com URLs against their own algorithms, then it's copying and foul play.
The surprising thing here is how much publicity Google's giving the issue knowing that Microsoft could shoot them down in no time with a few code snippets (if there's no foul play going on).
> It wouldn't be hard to write a generic parser to detect URLs that look like search queries
vs
>However, if the toolbar has any logic to specifically parse Google's URL syntax
So they're either generically copying from ANY search engine, or they're specifically copying from Google. Either way, the perception and actual outcome is the same. I'm not sure either is inherently good or bad, but I'm surprised that there is such a delineation in peoples' minds.
Take a site-specific search index like the one that reddit uses. Such an index can prioritize by votes, comments, users, fine-tuned spam filters, and so on. A search engine specifically optimized for reddit has a lot more information available when returning links than a generic web crawler ever could.
If Bing came up with a generic way to leverage site-specific search engines and help drive traffic to those sites, is that still perceived with negative connotations?
Excellent point. When I solve problems like this, I usually wound up with a general purpose solution and then test it out and if necessary optimize for important cases.
If I search twitter for "binggate" then click on a link, the referrer would be:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Binggate
It wouldn't be hard to write a generic parser to detect URLs that look like search queries, and it'd be a novel way to gain a lot of information from private indexes (stack overflow, twitter, lucene/solr setups, reddit, etc).
If this is what Bing is doing, then kudos to them for clever thinking, no foul play.
However, if the toolbar has any logic to specifically parse Google's URL syntax, or if they're filtering and correlating google.com URLs against their own algorithms, then it's copying and foul play.
The surprising thing here is how much publicity Google's giving the issue knowing that Microsoft could shoot them down in no time with a few code snippets (if there's no foul play going on).