Microsoft Bing Still Denies Copying Google
We covered the details of this earlier in the week, but the debate is still raging. Matt Cutts has written another post regarding the apparent copying that Bing has been doing from the Google Search engine results.
First off, let me say that I respect all the people at Bing. From engineers to evangelists, everyone that I’ve met from Microsoft has been thoughtful and sincere, and I truly believe they want to make a great search engine too. I know that they work really hard, and the last thing I would want to do is imply that Bing is purely piggybacking Google. I don’t believe that.
That said, I didn’t expect that Microsoft would deny the claims so strongly. Yusuf Mehdi’s post says “We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop.”
The post includes a slew of screenshots showing nonsense queries created by Google that miraculously ended up showing up in Bing search results. I think the bottom line here is that, whether they’ve intentionally copied Google or not, the result is the same: Bing seems to be feeding you what amounts to a carbon copy of what you’d find on Google. Some argue that the information is open and free for the taking. Some say that technologies copy each other all the time. I think I’d rather just go to the source than deal with a middleman. Check the video below for details.
Android Overtakes Nokia As Top Selling Smartphone
Canalys reports that Android has moved 33.3 million handsets in the last quarter, moving them ahead of previous leader Nokia/Symbian at 31 million. In Q3, Android moved 20.3 million units, so this is a huge jump in Q4. This means that Android accounts for 32.9% of smart phones worldwide. According to NPD, Android has grown to over half (53 percent) of all consumer smartphone sales in the US. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 debuted at 2 percent of the overall U.S. smartphone market.
Egypt Restores Internet Connectivity
The uprising in Egypt has been a hot topic all week with the Egyptian government shutting down Internet and cellular service in an attempt to prevent protesters from organizing. This highlights the importance of Facebook and Twitter as communications platforms as these were the primary targets of the shutdown. In an effort to make sure Egyptians still had a voice, Google and newly-acquired SayNow worked in combination with Twitter to create @Speak2Tweet. This allows users to tweet by dialing a phone number from a landline and speaking.
Internet connectivity was restored after President Hosni Mubarak announced he would not seek re-election in September, but this sweeping Internet shutdown seems to have implications in the US. In Egypt, the government has the authority to demand that ISPs shut down. There are only five feeding the entire country, apparently. In the US, the infrastructure is a bit more complicated. It might be possible technically to do something similar, but the government here does not have the authority. Of course, there is legislation in the works that could give the president emergency powers over the Internet.
The legislators involved are obviously trying to distance themselves from the Egypt situation and say that there are “protections to prevent the president from denying Americans access to the Internet — even as it provides ample authority to ensure that those most critical services that rely on the Internet are protected.”