> where's the evidence that it's exclusively search engines they're monitoring? Let alone exclusively Google? There has been no evidence yet presented
The evidence that has been presented by Google does show that MS is monitoring Google's search results, or at the very least users' behavior when using Google.
I agree that there's no evidence that Google is the only search engine that's being monitored, but it makes little difference since for all practical purposes Google == search.
There's also no evidence that MS monitors other websites / behavior other than just search engines, but it's unclear how that would work? You can't just associate two websites because some users go from one to the other (correlation vs. causation, etc.)
- - -
At this point we're still in the "he said / she said" phase, but Google has more evidence and MS is coming out as incredibly defensive (e.g., raising an inquiry from the European Commission[1]: what does that have to do with anything!!?!)
> The evidence that has been presented by Google does show that MS is monitoring Google's search results, or at the very least users' behavior when using Google.
I said "exclusively".
> there's no evidence that Google is the only search engine that's being monitored
There's no evidence that it's only search engines.
> You can't just associate two websites because some users go from one to the other
sure you can, if they go via a link. Now you can just notice the link and say "great, there's an association", or you can monitor which links people click on and weight the graph accordingly. "great, there's an association, and this link is more popular than that one". Nice data to capture. Not constrained to search.
The evidence that has been presented by Google does show that MS is monitoring Google's search results, or at the very least users' behavior when using Google.
I agree that there's no evidence that Google is the only search engine that's being monitored, but it makes little difference since for all practical purposes Google == search.
There's also no evidence that MS monitors other websites / behavior other than just search engines, but it's unclear how that would work? You can't just associate two websites because some users go from one to the other (correlation vs. causation, etc.)
- - -
At this point we're still in the "he said / she said" phase, but Google has more evidence and MS is coming out as incredibly defensive (e.g., raising an inquiry from the European Commission[1]: what does that have to do with anything!!?!)
[1] http://twitter.com/fxshaw/status/32519996852674560#