Microsoft to Google: We Don't Copy, You Copy

Call it Nerd Wars II: The Empire Strikes Back. Microsoft angrily denied Google's recent claims that Bing has been copying Google's search results, calling the accusation "insulting," in a ratcheting up of tensions between the two computer giants. "We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop," said a blog post by Yusef Mehdi, a senior vice president at Microsoft, saying Google's accusations were a "publicity stunt."

Google announced this week that it had caught Bing "cheating" in a sting in which Google added nonsense search results to its search program, then watched as the same results turned up on Bing. But Microsoft defended itself, saying that Bing used 1,000 data points to shape its results, and Google's search terms showed up only 10% of the time. Then the Microsoft executive returned fire: "If you are keeping tabs, you will notice Google has 'copied' a few of these," he wrote. The Wall Street Journal has more.

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