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Google has reduced itself to copying Bing. First, when word got out that Bing was going to have tweets appear on its search results, a bunch of Gaylers (google employees) jumped in a car and drove to San Francisco with a $25 million check and begged Twitter to give them access to the feed firehose. Next, they copied Bing’s search results page and now they are copying Bing’s homepage.
Bing displays spectacular images from around the world on its homepage. It has become very popular, so much so that some grade schools begin their day by discussing the picture on Bing’s homepage.
Unlike Bing, Google’s homepage allows you to upload your own image. They pass it off as personalization. The real reason is that the pictures Microsoft features on it homepage cost a lot of money. Microsoft does it as part of its community give back. Whereas, Google is too cheap to pay for anything – unless they think they are getting your first born for nothing as in the case of the Twitter firehose.
Even worse, the homepage upload feature has a bug. It will not let you delete the image. The image is stored as part of a library that others can reuse. So if there is a lawsuit the person that uploaded it, is at fault not Google. YouTube operates under a similar model – the person that uploaded the video is responsible not Google. On the other hand, it could really be a bug. If so, then the Gaylers are asleep at the wheel. It is just plain stupid to allow such an error on the homepage.
In the end, Bing did not end up displaying Twitter feeds on its search results page because it was too spammy. Google did and turned its search results page into a spam engine.
Channels: bing, copying, google, homepage
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Are you an employee of Microsoft? Jeez…
Comment by Dean — June 11, 2010 @ 1:35 PM
Great story. Dead right on Google. Always. I have been following your blog for 5 years now and when you said Google was big nobody believed you and later they did. Then you said they were done and again nobody believed but now I think people are starting to see that it could be true. They might endup a startup again.
Comment by wall street insider — June 11, 2010 @ 9:53 AM
It is becoming evident that the google guys (gaylers) were just lucky.
Comment by John Seymour — June 11, 2010 @ 9:46 PM
Hey everybody gets lucky so what!!!!!!
Comment by Tom — June 11, 2010 @ 9:47 PM
Just curious – what did Google do to you?
This is funny –
"The real reason is that the pictures Microsoft features on it homepage cost a lot of money. Microsoft does it as part of its community give back. Whereas, Google is too cheap to pay for anything – unless they think they are getting your first born for nothing as in the case of the Twitter firehose."
Comment by Curious — June 11, 2010 @ 9:52 PM
Congrats. This made it to CNBC. Google admitted that there was a bug and pulled their homepage gimmick.
Comment by Howel — June 11, 2010 @ 10:00 PM
Yes this story made it to CNBC. Google had to back track and kill their homepage product. How embarrassing http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/art-of-hom...
Comment by Steven Kites — June 11, 2010 @ 10:25 PM
They admitted it was a bug – how do we know there are no other bugs. Jeeeeeeeeeeezzz
Comment by kathy m — June 11, 2010 @ 10:26 PM
idiots – they are a one trick pony
Comment by one trick pony — June 11, 2010 @ 10:28 PM
But perhaps the best pony in the history of the world.
Comment by RiahNau — June 11, 2010 @ 10:37 PM
Have you actually tried using Bing maps compared to google side by side -especially for non US locations? It misses out complete cities and shows maybe a highway where google shows entire city grids! Ditto for search results. Microsoft IE copied all the features from Chrome including images of recently visited web sites. Bing is such a desperate google wannabe and that's what it always be. Think innovation and one product that MS has created originally and first – Word? Excel? IE? XBOX? Zune? Oh wait a second everyone is copying their innovations, I forget!
Comment by Yogesh — June 12, 2010 @ 1:13 PM