I wonder what G's response will be?

I can't see Google doing something so in-your-face like this to Bing.

I love it when MS is the kettle calling the other pots black.

I come from the trenches of Silicon Valley and I've fought them tooth and nail, face to face, and I remember lots of their dirt deeds.

I could start listing MS's earlier dirty deeds and it was a long list I'm sure they'd like to forget as they destroyed company after company. Most notably nuking the disk doubler industry by stomping on patents while killing off fledgling and thriving companies and ultimately whacking both email and browser giants by giving away what people were willing to pay for at the time.

Do no evil should be "Do no Microsoft"

Then too, there's the security/standards infringing saga that's at the front of some people's minds when they think of Internet Explorer...

Perspective here, incrediBILL has very valid points, but netmeg, INTENTION is the key. MS doesn't intentionally write code that is going make users vulnerable via IE but google's intentions are very obvious.

When I think of Internet Explorer, I think of Microsoft's tradition of ignoring web standards. That's intention.

This marketing flatulence only adds to my conviction that Bing will never beat Google in the search department... and shows they're very much aware of that. Bing needs this.

Ya, how long did Apple walk on Microsoft with Ads and Microsoft didn't respond? It is strange to see MS picking this fight.

^^ spot on.

I wonder what G's response will be?

they really don't have one.....

When I think of Internet Explorer, I think of Microsoft's tradition of ignoring web standards. That's intention.

That's not intention to exploit, that's just stubbornness and arrogance on the part of MS. And it doesn't violate users privacy -- it just creates many many headaches for developers who have to then take responsibility for the user experience by finding work-arounds. In the recent past I had many bad days banging my head against my monitor trying to accommodate IE6 visitors.

Do no evil should be "Do no Microsoft"

Really?

Think about this.

I am long enough in the tooth to remember MS's reputation in the eighties and nineties. Consider how bad (evil) Google has been to allow MS to do this?

Hard to say. If your web browser is the most popular one, and you want to keep it that way, setting your own 'web standards' may be one way of achieving that. No wonder the IE team jumped on this [windowsteamblog.com ]. But I don't buy into the idea that it was Google's intention to exploit this in order to make money. Their explanation seems quite understandable; you could perhaps even partly blame Apple. Not to say that the fine isn't valid... it wasn't supposed to happen.

But what's worse, really? IE headaches such as your own must have cost the industry billions of dollars by now.

I don't need to further try to put this OP in perspective. I think it's obvious to most.

What I find much more enlightening, are the anti-Google comments at the attached article. The same message seems to be spreading throughout more of the people you talk to on the street, and small business owners as well. 2-3 years ago, if you asked just about anyone in tech what they thought of Google... you still would've been rewarded with smiling faces and rosy images of unicorns prancing through a field. Almost everyone drank from the do no evil mantra, because it still kinda fit.

Fast forward a few years and it sounds like more people are starting to lose trust and the word is spreading to more everyday people who only know it as a search engine.

I also find it coincidental that the FTC releases info about getting closer to a decision on the Google antitrust case, in the same general timeframe that MSFT starts this campaign. I predict much more of this type of negative campaigning against Google over the next few months, culminating with an FTC announcement that Google may actually be a bit more evil than they led us all to believe, and the seeds will have been put in place in enough peoples mind to make a difference.

much more of this type of negative campaigning against Google over the next few months

I was thinking the same thing.

Any online search/info/social company has nothing to lose from focusing on Google's bad points (except maybe some SERPs) to highlight just how bad and anti-competitive Google has become.

Why? Because everyone that would use Google is/has used Google by now anyway.

So maybe for once, the notion that all PR is good PR may not actually be true for G.

TW

Its the right way to compete against google, be cause people around the world are slowly getting a little skeptic about google.

If your competitor has sociopathic tendencies I think it's OK to talk about that.

People deserve to know when they are walking into a privacy trap.

It is surprising to see that Microsoft is the one with the warning to consumers, but it's welcome since Google was found guilty.

Fact: Google promised they would not track Safari users before they went ahead and did so anyway, a double whammy.

@incrediBILL

I love it when MS is the kettle calling the other pots black.

Heh! Heh!

I just love it when ostensibly "good organisations, run by idealistic, talented people" are hi-jacked by the usual "Bean Counter Vulture Capitalists" and then they become feral.

They are all as bad as one another in my book.

Eventually? Who/What will succeed them?

Eventually? Who/What will succeed them?

Another well meaning, holier than thou organisation who do no evil and who will offer all sorts of free stuff then realise how much money they can make and start the cycle again.

It's called capitalism. :(

It may remain an "attitude" argument among some. The "attitude" being similar in at least two cases: how Google markets "its" search and how Apple markets "its" hardware. In both cases, some might argue a "monopolistic" tendency while others argue that it's "their" product to sell in the manner they want: use it or don't. It's hard to argue against the latter.

Somewhat relevant to this discussion....

I was at South Coast Plaza yesterday (a huge mall in Cost Mesa).

I was walking with a friend and we passed by what looked like a new Apple Store. Upon further investigation, it was a Microsoft store, designed to look like Apple. They had employees in the front window moving their arms up and down....they were playing some sort of video game.

The ENTIRE STORE was empty, and this was mid-day.

Hilarious to watch these huge unethical companies fight each other in court with one hand, and copy what their competitors are doing with the other.

Pathetic that our Federal Government does not have the power to shut down these unethical practices, and are merely there to provide the illusion that our government is strong on protecting the people and the consumer from unethical and illegal business practices.

The novelty here is that Google apparently circumvented the privacy protections built into Apple’s Safari browser in a deliberate, and ultimately, successful fashion.

Mmmm that's delicious irony. Google gets all pissy when SEO's successfully reverse engineer their algorithm....yet it's apparently ok for Google to do the same to their competitors. Google then sends the biggest red herring alive out to search conferences in order to disseminate more disinformation.

How did that expression go? "When the shoe is on the other foot"?

Eric Schmidt famously said that litigation is “just a business negotiation being conducted in the courts.”

So much attribution to google for being "smart" when in reality their core business model relies on flaunting the law. It's pretty easy to get an edge when you don't play by the rules but rules and laws are just a reflection of what society deems acceptable behavior so while google may flaunt laws and probably won't receive any meaningful sanctions from the FTC it is still the general public that decides it fate. By pointing out in the court of public opinion that google is an untrustworthy web service Bing is chipping away at the googly "do no evil" facade so carefully crafted and nurtured by their PR team and abetted by corrupt main stream media.

The few cases where google has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar is just an indication of what a sleazy operation they have become, it has always been about trust and when they lose that, they have lost. The veneer is fading.

Sadly, you can't really have that vaulted 'privacy' and the future of personalized information everyone also wants. The masses tend not to care as long as these computing appliances can deliver the personalized experience they really want which does require tracking, lots of tracking.

However, if you opt-out, out is out.

Sadly, you can't really have that vaulted 'privacy' and the future of personalized information everyone also wants.

Not quite sure "everyone" realizes the cost/benefit to that elusive yet rich, personalized search experience that is probably just CYA for gross privacy violations. Opting in to such a wonderful personalized search experience would probably be the gold standard, acceptable to those who are willing to trade off their soul for better(?) search results.

The masses tend not to care as long as these computing appliances can deliver the personalized experience they really want which does require tracking, lots of tracking.

Which masses are you referring to? Most technically inclined people who understand what's going on below the surface implement plenty of measures to avoid the tracking. And for those you say do not care, it's not that they do not care it's more likely they do not know. If they knew they too would probably care enough to also take steps to avoid tracking.

Also, from where do you draw conclusions that people have a need for "personalized experience they really want"? I've never heard anyone say that. When I talk to people about tracking they invariably ask me what they can do to avoid it, or at least lessen it.

When I talk to people about tracking they invariably ask me what they can do to avoid it, or at least lessen it.

Same here. Non-tech people have asked me why after they search for cat food and then decide to read up on lawn mowers, they get haunted by cat food ads on the lawn mower sites? I don't think people want it - I think they just don't realize it can be changed/blocked.

Of course, IE 9 is supposedly going to change all that. :D

If you're really worried about privacy and want a clean interface, check out DuckDuckGo

^ I changed to it a few weeks ago. Does what it says on the tin! :)