How can Google opt-out of having its search index copied by Microsoft?
The funniest argument in this has been "Bing hasn't got the data, Google has an unfair advantage etc" as if Microsoft didn't exist before Google.
Microsoft have had years headstart to get their online division doing something worthwhile, but they still can't get it right.
What Microsoft apparently has done is to infer relationships from Gooogle SRPs to various sites by way of information gathered through the Bing toolbar (and possibly other documented and user opt-in channels w/in IE). Using toolbar collected signals is well-established practice -- that's how Google obtains information regarding site performance.
This is the crux for me, Bing is using data from Google, does Google use data from Bing or only themselves?
Even if all true, I don't see it as unethical business practice. Definitely a marketing black eye, but not much else.
Google is careful not to do this.
It's most certainly morally wrong.
I want to see a project started to r/e the bing toolbar, and create something to send rubbish data back to bing to screw up their search index. That'd be awesome to see.
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.
They're capturing what users click on, which doesn't include any information about the wishes of the website owner.
I think this counts as extracting information from the Google results page.
<meta name=robots> is designed to prevent search engines automatically extracting information from web pages. By involving a human in the process, Bing are (presumably) avoiding this rule. Is this a good thing?
I accept that Bing don't access the page content itself, so wouldn't be able to see the <meta> tag if it was there.