Google has made the claim that Microsoft is stealing search results for its own search engine Bing.

The claim appeared yesterday in technology blog Search Engine Land, following a briefing by Google with its editor on the issue, in which they claimed that Microsoft could be copying some of its top search results.

Apparently Google also said that it had operated ‘a sting’ operating to find out if it were the case, having created arbitrary search results through some random query terms, which it later discovered  were also found on Bing when the same query terms were entered.

Claims continued to escalate later in the day when Matt Cutts, software engineer for Google began a panel discussion at Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box, involving vice president of Microsoft Harry Shum, by outlining the accusation.

Shum claimed that the company did not copy anything, but was in fact learning from customers who ‘willingly’ shared data with Microsoft.

A statement was then issued by Google, stating “Our testing has concluded that Bing is copy Google web search results.”
The statement, issued on behalf of Google software engineer Amit Singhal, continued to say that the company welcomed competition if it proved to be innovative, but did not approve of “recycled search results” taken from a competitor.

A statement issued from Stegan Weitz, a director of Bing stated that the search engine did not copy search results from Google.

“We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results. The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites."