Don’t underestimate Apple’s contributions

By Peter Nowak - Monday, August 29, 2011 at 11:07 AM - 4 Comments

Photo by Tony…/Flickr

I’m back from my short vacation and what’s the first thing I see? A character assassination attempt by my fellow blogger Jesse Brown.

Just kidding. I have nothing but respect for Jesse and love his stuff (his interview a few years back with Jim Prentice, where the industry minister hung up on him, is one of my all-time favourites). He messaged me while I was gone to ask if I was okay with him rebutting my blog post the other day about Steve Jobs and Apple’s importance to technology over the past decade. Of course I was, so he had at it.

To summarize, Jesse challenged my assertions that Apple changed everything with a slew of products that included the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad. He went on to say that Google has been the far more important technology company over the past 10 years. Continue…

AOL struggles to reinvent itself

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Reuters/Brendan McDermi

A decade ago, AOL was one of the most promising firms in the online world. Tens of millions of North American users relied on its dial-up Internet access services and came to know its trademark greeting, “You’ve got mail!” Today, its future appears murky as the former giant tries to claw back into the fold as a major Internet presence.

The company took a walloping on the stock market last week when its shares fell almost 26 per cent, hitting their lowest point since AOL ended its disastrous merger with Time Warner in December 2009. The sell-off occurred after it released second-quarter earnings, which showed total revenues were down eight per cent over last year. In response to the hit in share value, the company approved a scheme to buy up US$250 million of its own shares.

The market shellacking was a major blow for a company that’s been fighting for the past year to reinvent itself as a new media firm. It bought the news website the Huffington Post for US$315 million in February and the tech website TechCrunch last year. After installing Arianna Huffington as the head of its new Huffington Post Media Group, AOL opened several new websites—17 during the last quarter alone. AOL now boasts nearly 10 million unique visitors to its websites every month. That’s more than the New York Times, according to the company’s CEO, Tim Armstrong.

Continue…

Google wants to see your papers

By Jesse Brown - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:17 PM - 8 Comments

Earlier this month, Google+ kicked a geeky hornet’s nest by suspending the accounts of users registered under pseudonyms and nicknames. The angry reaction to their Facebook-like “real names” policy was unsurprising, considering the tech-centric early-adopter types who currently populate the nascent social network. I don’t want to call the Google+ crowd (of which I am a member) nerdy, but let’s just say that more than a few users would rather be known as “Lord Voldemort” than whatever happens to be printed on their birth certificates.

Speaking of those birth certificates, Google would like to see them.  When suspended users complained to Google, they were given ‘review’ forms. If you insist that “BonerKing” is your ‘common name,’ Google will ask you for government-issued ID to prove it:

We have reviewed your appeal and need more information in order to verify that the name entered [ __ ] is your common name.

Please reply to this email with a copy of your government issued ID, which we will dispose of after review.

Critics of the policy brought up numerous people for whom pseudonyms are perfectly reasonable and necessary, such as women with abusive exes or stalkers, government employees forbidden from using their real names on social networks, gay teens who are out online but not at home, and so on. (As an aside, wouldn’t the entire online dating industry cease to exist if ‘real name’ policies were standardized?)

The debate has come to be known as the #Nymwars, just in case additional proof of the disgruntled users’ geekery was needed. As it rages, Google has sprinkled fuel on the fire by introducing a “Verified” account system, similar to the one used on Twitter. Some team at Google now has the job of contacting every “Lady Gaga” on the network to find out if one of them is actually her highness Stefani Germanotta.

The move raises new questions: Lady Gaga, after all, is not the name on Ms.Germanotta’s government-issued ID. So why does she get to use her nickname when the rest of us cannot? Because she’s a celebrity, stupid. But since when does Google care about celebrities? And isn’t there something weird about Google demanding to see our ID under any circumstance?

It may not be ‘evil’ per se, but it sure does feel a bit…unGoogly. I have an interview request in with the search giant, who have been remarkably open with and responsive to me in the past. I hope to share their thinking on these policies in an upcoming post.

Jesse Brown is the host of TVO.org’s Search Engine podcast. He is on Twitter @jessebrown

Update:  Google initially granted me an interview on this, and then nixed it without explanation. 

Is Googorola anti-competitive? Not at all.

By Peter Nowak - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 10:16 AM - 0 Comments

Photo by laihiu/Flickr

Google kicked this week off with a bang with a surprise announcement that it was acquiring cellphone maker Motorola for $12.5 billion, a huge move that will boost the search engine company’s employee headcount by 60%. As Google CEO Larry Page explained in a blog post, it’s a defensive move to acquire patents, a particular problem area for the company that I wrote about earlier.

Patent issues aside, one of the other main aspects many have focused on is that the deal is likely to alienate Google’s other mobile partners. HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and a few others who use Google’s free Android operating system will now find themselves competing directly against the maker of that software. Some are even speculating that the acquisition could become an antitrust issue. Continue…

Goodbye Moto

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:08 AM - 0 Comments

In a move that could shake up the hyper-competitive smart-phone market, Google Inc. acquired Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion on Monday. The purchase price represents a 63 per cent premium on the Friday closing price of Motorola’s shares. The move gives Google a hardware partner for its free Android mobile phone operating system. It also adds more than 17,000 patents, with 7,000 pending, to the Google library.

Globe and Mail

Shame on RIM

By Jesse Brown - Friday, August 12, 2011 at 10:49 AM - 12 Comments

“What happens to your data when Facebook is sold off in pieces?”

“We’ll see how ‘un-evil’ Google is when they start losing money.”

Such dot com doomsday scenarios are often used to illustrate the folly of trusting private companies with personal information. But we needn’t rely on these hypothetical scenarios anymore. We have RIM.

The troubled Waterloo-based company is pandering to public hysteria, tripping over itself to hand over the private messages and GPS coordinates of anyone the London cops suspect of rioting. Or anyone they say they suspect—what’s the difference, right?

This desperate act will do little to reverse RIMs’s tumbling market share or restore its tarnished brand. It speaks of a cowardly company pathetically trying to spin negative headlines about “Rioting 2.0″ into free publicity about their concern for public safety.

Instead, they provide us with a sad, tangible example of why we need to reconsider our arrangements with tech service providers. RIM has the power to completely expose millions of people—expose them to ridicule, to violence, to persecution. They have proven in the past that they will do so whenever it seems to be in their best business interest. Oppressive regimes have made spying and/or censorship the cost of entry, and RIM has fallen into line.

Now they are also selling out their customers in a free, Western society. They have become the target of hackers as a result.

It’s hard to feel sorry for them.

Jesse Brown is the host of TVO.org’s Search Engine podcast. He is on Twitter @jessebrown.

Google graph too small to show S&P/TSX tumble this morning

By Erica Alini - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 12:09 PM - 33 Comments

The Canadian stock market took such a dive this morning it went–literally–through the bottom of a Google Graph of the S&P/TSX Composite, the Canuck benchmark index (see this screenshot we took at 10.14 AM). The drop was largely attributed to Standard and Poor’s downgrading of the US’s long-term creditworthiness from AAA to AA plus on Friday.  The S&P/TSX Composite tumbled over 3 per cent in early morning trading before rebounding slightly.

Waging a patent war

By Cigdem Iltan - Friday, August 5, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Smartphone makers have been duking it out in the courts more than they have on store shelves in the past few weeks, and analysts say sales numbers may explain why. Devices that run Google’s Android platform now outshine Apple’s iPhone: first-quarter market-share estimates this year show Samsung has hurdled to 13 per cent from three per cent last year, while HTC jumped to 10 per cent from six. Some analysts believe the results have prompted Apple to lash out with a series of patent infringement lawsuits aimed at HTC, Samsung and Motorola, the world’s top three Android handset manufacturers.

Apple’s market share rose slightly too, but the tech giant’s third-quarter financial results show that nearly half of its revenue comes from the iPhone. Google chair Eric Schmidt last week came out swinging against Apple, accusing its execs of trying to tangle their competitors in a legal web. “They are not responding with innovation, they’re responding with lawsuits,” he said. “We have not done anything wrong.” But it is in Apple’s nature to be a tough litigator, technology analyst Carmi Levy says. “It would be naive of us to think Apple is running scared and is using courts to protect itself,” he says. During an earnings call last month, Apple COO Tim Cook said: “We have a very simple view here. And that view is that we love competition. But we want people to invent their own stuff. And we’re going to make sure that we defend our portfolio fervently.”

While companies that are assertive in the courts run the risk of diverting attention from the marketing of their wares, the manufacturers involved in the ongoing smartphone patent wars are sophisticated enough to focus on both areas, says Levy. Whether court battles impact innovation may be up for debate, but the power of litigation clearly isn’t: after a U.S. International Trade Commission judge recently ruled that Taiwan’s HTC had infringed on two Apple patents, China’s 21st Century Business Herald reported that two Chinese smartphone makers are considering jumping ship from Android to Microsoft’s Mango Windows Phone 7 operating system, raising the question of whether other companies may eventually follow suit.

Who owns your Facebook friends?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:08 AM - 13 Comments

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Investors eagerly awaiting a chance to get a piece of Facebook, valued as high as US$100 billion, might want to pay attention to the skirmish going on between the company and Google over who actually owns the “friends” of social networking users. Facebook’s lofty valuation is rooted in the idea that users will never abandon the site (as they once did with Friendster and later MySpace) because they don’t want to leave their friends behind. But what if someone makes it easy for them to take their friends with them?

Facebook, with some 700 million users, recently blocked a tool created by a third-party developer for Google’s Chrome browser that was designed to easily export a Facebook user’s friend list (including their all-important email addresses) to a rival social network. The developer assumed that Facebook users’ friends belong to them, not to Facebook. Facebook disagreed. With Google now trying to edge its way into the social networking space with Google+, Facebook explained that “each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums.”

What Facebook failed to mention is that it unsuccessfully tried to convince Google to allow its Gmail users to export their contact lists to Facebook last year. Getting other people’s email addresses is a key way Facebook helps to integrate new users into its site, allowing its software to suggest potential friends. Influential tech blogger Michael Arrington pointed out another irony: “Facebook already allows mass exporting of friends’ private email addresses via deals with Microsoft, Yahoo and possibly other partners.” In other words, it’s okay if Facebook does it to make money, but not if you want to switch to a rival network. And, as Arrington notes, that could be perceived as anti-competitive by the U.S. government. Suddenly, Facebook’s reign as social networking’s king looks a lot more vulnerable—as does that $100-billion valuation.

Google’s Android continues to widen its lead over Apple and BlackBerry

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments

In the fight for smartphone supremacy, Google’s Android operating system continues to widen its lead over Apple and BlackBerry

Chart Source: Comscore, Business Insider

Feds asked Google for user data

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

Google’s recently released 2011 Transparency Report shows the Canadian government asked the internet giant to hand over user data 38 times between July and December 2010. It’s not clear which departments requested the data, nor is it clear how many Canadians were involved. U.S. government requests, for instance, could target Canadian users. Google’s report only specifies that the company either complied, either fully or partially, with 55 per cent of the requests. The U.S. topped the list with 4,601 requests for user data, followed by Brazil at 1,804 and India at 1,699.

Toronto Star

Google

Google + you = what?

By Jesse Brown - Monday, July 4, 2011 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

It’s my fourth day on Google +, the search giant’s new social network service, and my impression is….non existent.

I don’t know what I think of +, but I must admit I’m intrigued. It’s obvious that there are tons of features within the service that Google is not pushing or even unveiling yet, for fear of scaring users off with too much complexity. It’s also clear that Google could have made things easier for me, algorithmically suggesting (or even automatically assigning) some friends from my Gmail contacts to get me started. But after their privacy snafu with Google Buzz, they don’t dare. Google doesn’t want to be pushy. It’s up to me to pick and choose who I’d like to share with, and then it’s up to them to decide if they want in too. Continue…

Hacker attack

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 5 Comments

Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

Visitors to the Conservative Party of Canada’s website last Tuesday were confronted with a shocking message: the Prime Minister had been rushed to hospital in Toronto after choking on a hash brown. Media outlets scrambled to unearth more details about the breakfast-hour emergency only to learn that it was all a big joke. The party’s website had been hacked.

It didn’t take long to find out who was behind the prank. A group calling itself LulzRaft claimed responsibility on Twitter, and later followed up by breaking into the party’s donor database and posting names and emails of more than 5,000 people online. Why did they do it? “The Conservative party was really just a hack of opportunity,” wrote someone purporting to be the hacker in an anonymous email to Maclean’s. “We noticed the vulnerability and realized we could easily create some lulz, and draw some media attention without hurting anyone.” For the uninitiated, “lulz” is Web-slang for laughs—derived from the abbreviation LOL, for “laugh out loud.”

But the Tories aren’t laughing. Nor should they be. It’s an embarrassing breach of security for a governing party that, just a few months earlier, assured Canadians that it had a cyber-security strategy in place. It’s also the latest in a string of brazen attacks on high-profile targets around the globe, ranging from Sony Corp. and Google Inc. to defence contractor Lockheed Martin and the International Monetary Fund. In addition to attention-seekers like LulzRaft, experts say many more hackers are quietly working on behalf of organized crime and even foreign governments—so much so that Washington is now talking about cyberattacks as a potential “act of war.”

Continue…

High-tech smear job

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 8:05 AM - 0 Comments

Keystone Press

The overlap between Facebook and Google isn’t immediately obvious—one is a social network, the other a search engine—but Facebook’s recent attempts to plant nasty news stories about Google demonstrates just how intense the rivalry between the two tech giants has become. Facebook was recently forced to admit it secretly hired PR firm Burson-Marsteller to urge journalists to investigate claims that Google had invaded people’s privacy with its new social networking tool, Social Circle, a potential Facebook competitor.

Despite their different business models, both companies rely on online advertising to pay the bills, with Google leading the charge with annual sales of about US$29 billion, compared to an estimated US$1 billion for Facebook. But Facebook is growing fast and, in many cases, is competing for the same bucket of ad dollars. Longer term, there’s speculation Facebook could replace Google as the Web’s gatekeeper, with users turning to their social networks when looking for online information. This may be the first time the fight between the duo has turned dirty, but likely not the last.

Obama’s best friends

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 1 Comment

Jim Young/Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama’s latest Facebook update was well above the usual fare of Farmville alerts and motivational quotes. On a trip to Facebook’s head office for a town hall meeting last week, Obama declared America’s finances to be “unsustainable,” and took a few swipes at his Republican opponents. But Obama’s visit also highlighted his increasingly close ties to some businesses. This wasn’t Obama’s first Silicon Valley sojourn. He has visited the Googleplex and has appointed General Electrics CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head an economic advisory panel. And he’ll forever be associated with General Motors for the mega-bailout. Whether the ties are good for the companies or Obama is debatable. Outrage over GE’s low tax bill and indications Facebook may block some content in China haven’t made either very popular. But then again, polls say Obama’s popularity is tanking too, so it’s a two-way street.

WiFi on Steroids: Could 'White Space' save Canada's Internet?

By Jesse Brown - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 5:59 PM - 10 Comments

A Texan grandma is years ahead of any Canadian, technologically speaking. She was the first to tap into a fledgling White Space broadband network, using technology that could allow broadband WiFi access to be blanketed over entire populations, much like a radio station’s signal.

In February of 2009, the U.S. switched over to digital TV, and the nation’s supply of rabbit-ear antennae instantly became worthless. The switchover freed valuable low-frequency UHF spectrum—the kind that goes through walls. Canada will follow suit this August.

Google co-founder Larry Page calls White Space “WiFi on Steroids,” referring not only to the technology’s reach, but also to the blazing speeds it could enable. Others call it “Super Wifi,” which nerds argue is technically inaccurate. But no one is arguing about the fact that White Space has the potential to completely disrupt the ISP business, rendering irrelevant the entire expensive “last mile” issue—those millions of cables leading into millions of homes.

How will White Space happen? Google has pondered the possibility of providing White Space access for free to test communities. Their rationale? The easier it is for people to use the Internet, the more people will use the Internet, and the better for Google. If the project is deemed a success, the search giant could simply destroy the ISP business, obliterating the subscription model entirely.

Alternatively, governments could invest in White Space infrastructure and provide access as a free public utility, like water fountains in parks.

Or, new ISP entrants could bid on the spectrum and provide a competitive alternative to the existing players. Or universities could provide access, which is already happening in Houston, thanks to Rice University and the National Science Foundation.

But before any of that happens here, Canada will again have to follow America’s lead; the FCC approved the unlicensed use of White Space in November of ’08. The CRTC Industry Canada has yet to make any such commitment, and may choose instead to privatize the spectrum.

Microsoft lodges Google complaint with EU

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 3:43 PM - 2 Comments

Microsoft is accusing Google of abusing its status as the EU’s dominant search engine, and has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission. Among other claims, Microsoft alleges Google has prevented it from becoming a competitive alternative by restricting access to the Google-owned YouTube, which has produced only “limited” apps for Microsoft’s Windows mobile software while releasing superior ones for the Google Android platform. “Having spent more than a decade wearing the shoe on the other foot with European Commission,” Microsoft said, acknowledging its own experience as being the subject of one of the biggest antitrust complaints in recent history, “we recognize the importance of ensuring that competition laws remain balanced and that technology innovation moves forward.”

CNN Money

Google hopes you "like" +1

By Jason Kirby - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 9:14 PM - 7 Comments

Google has unveiled its latest effort to muscle into the social networking sphere. Google +1 is the company’s answer to Facebook’s Thumbs-up “Like” button. The +1 will show up next to search results and eventually on pages all over the Web, and when you click on it, your recommendation will be registered. Likewise, the search results and ads you see will tell you who among your contacts has vouched for them. Here’s a video explaining it.

As many have pointed out, this is just another in a long line of attempts by Google to be more social, with most of them falling flat. How can it be that a company that only a few years ago looked like it was going to take over the world has failed so miserably at making friends? Continue…

Do you take cellphone?

By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 11:13 AM - 0 Comments

Noah Berger/The New York Times

PayPal, the online payment-processing system made popular by eBay, its corporate parent, is betting that its future may not be online, but in the real world. PayPal is planning a push into retail stores with a system that would involve swiping cellphones at registers to make payments, rather than using credit or debit cards. The company, which has 95 million users online, estimates expanding into physical stores could double its revenues to $7 billion within two years.

PayPal isn’t the only firm anxiously eyeing this market. Google and Apple are now reportedly working on cellphone payment systems—using a technology called near-field communications—as are cellphone makers like Research In Motion and Nokia. The systems could be useful for consumers who always have a smartphone in hand. But for cellphone companies looking to be the next Visa, it’s a market potentially worth tens of billions of dollars.

Google, Apple, and Netflix: tomorrow's entertainment studios?

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 1:55 PM - 4 Comments

David Carr has posted some interesting thoughts on Google’s mission drift: though they’ll deny it ’til sundown, the search giant is slowly but surely getting into the content business.  They’re cutting deals with major league sports and with Hollywood studios. They’re investing millions in celebrity content for Youtube. And last month, they rolled out One Pass, an attempt to wrap a universal payment layer around “pro” publishing content.

Meanwhile, Netflix made headlines last week by trumping the cable TV networks and buying a new David Fincher series (sight unseen) for $100 million.  The news gobsmacked the entertainment industry, who considered Netflix merely a conduit for content, not a producer of it.  But the strategy is nothing new. Continue…

The Googlization Of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)

By Chris Sorensen - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 10:52 AM - 0 Comments

At first blush, this book looks to be a few years too late. The chatter in Silicon Valley these days is about social networking site Facebook, which, after several years of heady growth, is being touted as the next Internet game-changer. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped using Google, only that we’ve ceased to be amazed by it—which is exactly Siva Vaidhyanathan’s point. He argues that Google has become so commonplace in people’s lives that we no longer question how much power we’ve already ceded to the Mountainview, Calif.-based giant.

Adorned with its colourful logo, Google’s clever search engine effectively determines what we view on the Web, filtering results based on popularity, location of users and even personal search histories. We assume Google is on our side because we find its services useful and pleasing, but we seldom question whether Google’s view of the online world—or, more accurately, the picture of the online world Google allows us to see—is the same one we’re actually interested in exploring.
The core problem, according to Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, is that we’re not actually Google’s customers. We’re its product. Advertisers pay Google billions to use the information it collects about users to better target us with ads. While that doesn’t necessarily lessen the utility of Google’s services, Vaidhyanathan says it should make us think carefully about Google’s noble-sounding mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” when it comes to opening up our university libraries and other shared resources of human knowledge for Google to copy and index. After all, there are no guarantees that Google, a for-profit business, will always act in our best interests. Nor can we be sure it will still be around a decade from now, let alone 100 years or more.

Android isn't really open. It's just less closed than Apple.

By Jesse Brown - Monday, March 14, 2011 at 2:34 PM - 21 Comments

Idiots worldwide rejoiced when news came that the iBoobs app, censored by Apple, had found a home in the Android Marketplace.

For those tragically unfamiliar with iBoobs—how can I describe it? It’s boobs. They jiggle. A settings screen lets you adjust things like “boob weight,” “stifness,” and “gravity factor.” If any of this turns you on, I’d like to introduce you to a killer app called porn.

iBoobs is a Freemium product. If you upgrade from the free ”iBoobs light” app to the $2.10 paid app, you can toss the boobs around with the tip of your finger.  Or at least, you could last week. It seems that Google has since followed Apple’s lead (at least partially) and banned the paid version of the app.

What could possibly have been the problem?

The boobs themselves are still available.  Google is not anti-boob, per se. No statement has been issued, and so we must speculate: it seems Google’s official policy on boobs is that it’s okay to shake them around really hard, so long as you don’t poke, smoosh, flick or pull them.

Google is such a tease.

Perhaps it wasn’t the touching—maybe Google objected to iBoob’s extras—shake them boobs just right, and you get a peek of nipple.

This feature alone places iBoobs outside of the Android Marketplace’s prohibition on nudity and sexually explicit material.  This, you may remember, was not always the case.  The Android Marketplace was initially open to all apps—that was its defining attribute. But after Android surged in popularity (and after Steve Jobs sneered puritanically in Google’s direction) the porn was cut.  Google retreated to a middling position on sex apps designed to keep them just a bit more risque then Apple; hardcore was out, nudity too, but sexy apps could stay if they identified themselves as not for kids. As Google puts it: “Apps that focus on suggestive or sexual references must be rated ‘High maturity’.”

High maturity. iBoobs certainly doesn’t qualify for that.

The fact is, Google is supposed to be busy organizing the world’s information, not jiggling CGI jugs around to determine where they stand on their arbitrary porno-scale.  If Android is open, then let it be open. Open doesn’t mean “less closed than Apple,” it means open. Open to any dumb app that any dumb person wants to make or to use.

Kinda like the Internet.

Google wants to help you plan your wedding

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

Could this be the end of expensive wedding planners? Google has launched its latest bid to organize your life: Google for Weddings. The Internet search giant has designed a site with customized software aimed at users who are planning weddings. The site includes tools to help users plan a wedding budget or guest list, design a wedding website, and even edit and share wedding photos. Wedding expert Michelle Rago was employed to add her personal touch by designing the templates.

Newser

Even Microsoft uses Google

By Erica Alini - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 1:14 PM - 0 Comments

When Microsoft launched Bing in 2009, geeks across the Internet joked that the name must stand for “Because It’s Not Google.” But that very connotation came under question last week when Google accused its search engine archival of copying its result listings.

The claim came after the California-based Web behemoth ran a test that, it says, demonstrates that some of Bing’s search results came directly from Google. The company temporarily altered some of its algorithms so that, for example, a search for “mbzrxpgjys,” which would normally produce zero or a few irrelevant results, turned up a link to the website of Research in Motion. After a while, Google said, an identical search on Bing started producing the same result.

Microsoft did not deny the claim, but said that Google’s results are one of the more than 1,000 signals it uses to compile its own search listings. While Microsoft’s conduct is not illegal, according to Danny Sullivan, editor of the tech blog Search Engine Land, it means Bing increasingly looks like Google, depriving Internet users of the benefits of being able to choose among search engines, each with their own unique “search engine voice.”