That is sensible, but can easily slide into an ends justifying the means. In other words, we know that the engineers were tasked with proving that Microsoft was copying Google. That's a different task than figuring out what the Bing toolbar does with data from the Google search page.
Given the low success rate, it is not implausible that the engineers pushed whatever ground rules there were (if any) in the pursuit of evidence. It seems to me that is the most plausible explanation for the uncertainty about whether it was 7, 8, or 9 cases.
To go beyond what is easy for the media to report, it is reasonable to expect that a company in Google's position has twenty or more full time engineers analyzing their competitor's products. The story about "torsoraphy" really only makes sense if Google has such a program. Seriously, is anyone surprised that Google and Bing analyze each other's engineering?
[WildSpeculation]
One or more Google engineers tasked with analyzing the competition discovered "torsoraphy" connection and identified its correlation with the Bing toolbar - however, keep in mind that Google has not claimed that the "torsoraphy" naturally occurred in the wild.
[/WildSpeculation]
[GoogleClaim]
Based on the "torsoraphy" discovery, one or more Google engineers hard coded web pages - presumably with permission from senior managers since a leak that it was done casually has such serious blowback potential - twenty Google engineers armed with laptops were tasked with creating top keyword rankings.The project was at least active for two weeks over the traditional Christmas Holiday[/GoogleClaim]
[WildSpeculation]
The Google engineers, surprised at their initial lack of success tried increasingly diverse and aggressive methods as time passed despite the diversity of IP's they used as they traveled over the Christmas Holidays. Being good hackers some even tried exotic techniques perhaps even creating manipulating existing web pages to influence the search rankings. On advice of lawyers, Google is not comfortable accusing Microsoft of copying in these cases.
A month later, Google plans to announce the Android Marketplace while Apple is going to proclaim that Rupert Murdoch is the future of journalism. Google is going head to head with the reigning PR champion of the world. They turn the experiment into a torrid story and release it on February 1.
Larry Page knows the difference between a Founder from Stanford and a former IBM'er from a cow college in Alabama. It's no match. Binggate drowns out the traditional eve-of-event Apple adulation. On the day of the events, the mudslinging is far sexier than "and it has a hundred pages" for the tech press.[/WildSpeculation]
How bad was it yesterday for Apple? Stories about Apple's triumph with The Daily didn't make the front page of HN. The tech press even found Microsoft more interesting than Apple yesterday. Binggate was Googles attemt to kill two birds with one stone.
Comments
>"Maybe they were trying different approaches"
That is sensible, but can easily slide into an ends justifying the means. In other words, we know that the engineers were tasked with proving that Microsoft was copying Google. That's a different task than figuring out what the Bing toolbar does with data from the Google search page.
Given the low success rate, it is not implausible that the engineers pushed whatever ground rules there were (if any) in the pursuit of evidence. It seems to me that is the most plausible explanation for the uncertainty about whether it was 7, 8, or 9 cases.
To go beyond what is easy for the media to report, it is reasonable to expect that a company in Google's position has twenty or more full time engineers analyzing their competitor's products. The story about "torsoraphy" really only makes sense if Google has such a program. Seriously, is anyone surprised that Google and Bing analyze each other's engineering?
[WildSpeculation] One or more Google engineers tasked with analyzing the competition discovered "torsoraphy" connection and identified its correlation with the Bing toolbar - however, keep in mind that Google has not claimed that the "torsoraphy" naturally occurred in the wild. [/WildSpeculation]
[GoogleClaim] Based on the "torsoraphy" discovery, one or more Google engineers hard coded web pages - presumably with permission from senior managers since a leak that it was done casually has such serious blowback potential - twenty Google engineers armed with laptops were tasked with creating top keyword rankings.The project was at least active for two weeks over the traditional Christmas Holiday[/GoogleClaim]
[WildSpeculation] The Google engineers, surprised at their initial lack of success tried increasingly diverse and aggressive methods as time passed despite the diversity of IP's they used as they traveled over the Christmas Holidays. Being good hackers some even tried exotic techniques perhaps even creating manipulating existing web pages to influence the search rankings. On advice of lawyers, Google is not comfortable accusing Microsoft of copying in these cases.
A month later, Google plans to announce the Android Marketplace while Apple is going to proclaim that Rupert Murdoch is the future of journalism. Google is going head to head with the reigning PR champion of the world. They turn the experiment into a torrid story and release it on February 1.
Larry Page knows the difference between a Founder from Stanford and a former IBM'er from a cow college in Alabama. It's no match. Binggate drowns out the traditional eve-of-event Apple adulation. On the day of the events, the mudslinging is far sexier than "and it has a hundred pages" for the tech press.[/WildSpeculation]
How bad was it yesterday for Apple? Stories about Apple's triumph with The Daily didn't make the front page of HN. The tech press even found Microsoft more interesting than Apple yesterday. Binggate was Googles attemt to kill two birds with one stone.