Published: Feb 02, 2011 - 10:05 am
Discussion Started By: MattMcGee 841 Days ago
Category: Searching
9 Comments
9 Comments
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Comments
Blekko.
Have to agree with Julie!
1st place is probably Blekko. They gained some attention and from the PR side, they did not come off in a negative way.
2nd place is Bing. They proved to be clever and resourceful (whether you are on their side or against) and seemed to calmly take the criticism well. They will recover from the PR hit when more people actually learn more of the facts and not just the headlines.
3rd place goes to Google for throwing over-hyped and very misleading accusations while spinning the data and presenting it in a disingenuous way.
4th & last place is Ask.com for not capitalizing one the opportunity to gain some PR and remaining lost in the search space.
Also, if I have a 1B winner, it is Search Engine Land for the great posts.
Google won for people who just read the headlines, or who don't have a thorough understanding of the issues, technical aspects, or precedent.
Google lost for anyone not in the above group, although I have a hard time saying that Bing "won."
I think it was a draw and I believe nobody outside of this community really cares that much.
This whole episode reminded me of dueling political ads where the commercials tried to hammer points home that ultimately weren't that important to great majority of the people.
I think Bing is the winner. What really came out of this whole affair is the fact that Google is in fact, very concerned with Bing and what it does, and it's competitive threat. It looks surprisingly paranoid to me.
Even more ironic is the notion from Google that Bing's results are cheap imitations of their own. I suppose they've forgotten what the prototype Android phone looked like (it wasn't a touchscreen device). Apple provided them with their final model. And Schmidt sat on that board while Apple developed it. So Google pointing fingers and making accusations of "copying" is about the height of hypocrisy.
I think outside of our community (e.g. - the majority of the world) Google probably won. Google already has a positive perception so describing Bing as cheating or copying would reinforce the perception that Google has the best results.
Within the community I think Google lost. There was just too much PR behind this and the moralistic 'gotcha' just doesn't really sit well. I don't think Bing won but at least they weren't wearing mint shoes.
I actually think Blekko lost. I see little sense (from a business or consumer standpoint) to censoring the entire experience (for everyone) based on personal spam complaints from a group of technology innovators. Rank those sites lower if you wish, but removing them is simple censorship as far as I'm concerned.
Everyone lost. Google has spent the last week trying to undermine a foreign government (Egypt) and a rival search engine. What on Earth are they thinking?
I just don't see what Google is complaining about?
The fact Bing can steal their search results is more of a negative reflection on Google's business model than it is Bing's.
This just means that Google's algorithm is not as defensible as they thought it was. Tough shit.
Here's Matt Cutts take:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-bing/