Google and Bing, sitting in a tree…

18 September 2009 in Internet by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

This is sweet! Look what happens when you search for the word “search” on the world’s two leading Internet search engines.

Yes, if you Google for “search” the first result is Bing. And if you Google it on Bing, the first result is Google. Now who said these guys were competitors?

Hat-tip to Derek Jenkins (@ozdj), and doubtless others as the meme spreads.

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Tags: bing, google, microsoft, search

5 comments

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John Carney on 18 September 2009 at 3:50 pm

Sadly, it’s no longer true. At least not on the bing side of the equation.

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James on 18 September 2009 at 5:10 pm

You said “google it on bing”, that doesnt make sense.

You should say something like, “if you bing “search” your first result is google.”

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Stilgherrian on 18 September 2009 at 6:00 pm

@John Carney: Both sites are still exhibiting this behaviour for me. I just checked. My guess is that both sites have such complex global caching mechanisms that different people in different locations see different things — if that’s not too technical for a Friday.

@James: Um, the “Google it on Bing” thing is a little joke-ette that’s been doing the rounds.

Reply
Giania on 23 September 2009 at 1:57 am

Aye there are some differences between locations/servers.

We just conducted the experiment here in NH, USA and got from Google: AltaVista (really dude? I just had a flashback from seeing that), DogPile (uhhhh), THEN Bing, then local search results, then Yahoo! trailing a bit behind.

Googling it on Bing (I see what you did there) resulted in Yahoo! up top, then DogPile, the AltaVista, then Search.org, and then Google.

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Stilgherrian on 23 September 2009 at 4:17 pm

@Giania: This is where people are going to have a real problem adapting to the Age of the Internet. In the Age of Books, the books were the same for everyone. One viewpoint. One Truth. In the post-paper age, well, it’s all multiple viewpoints again. Scary.

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