The Fight Between Google And Microsoft Is Getting Ugly And Public (GOOG, MSFT)

Google and Microsoft have never been best friends, but their battles used to be fought behind closed doors, in board rooms and strategy planning sessions.Not anymore.In the last year or so, the companies have taken to fighting in public on issues ranging from patents to stealing search results.Most recently, Microsoft took out full page ads criticizing Google's new privacy policy, which spurred Google to write an angry blog post debunking some of Microsoft's "myths."But the real question is: who's winning? (Other than the tech press, who loves writing about this stuff.)We decided to run a tally....ROUND 1: Google shows how Bing steals Google's search resultsLast February, Microsoft invited Google search spam prevention head Matt Cutts (shown here) to appear on a panel moderated by a Google critic, Vivek Wadwha, and Bing's Harry Shum. It looked like it was going to be a slaughter, with everybody ganging up on Google's increasingly spammy search results.But in a brilliant preemptive strike, Google released proof that Bing had been scraping Google's search results. Google researchers created landing pages for fake words like "hiybbprqag," then watched as Bing "discovered" the same pages. They released the proof to Search Engine Land a few hours before the panel, then Cutts stuck to the theme.WINNER: Google. Nobody believed Microsoft as it tried to explain its way out of this one.Microsoft tried to explain that it used Google search results as only one of many inputs for relevance, and that obviously fake words were naturally going to show up identically in Bing because they don't exist anywhere else, so Bing had no other source for information about them.Still, the results told such a familiar tale -- Microsoft being unable to innovate -- that everybody ignored the fine explanations. The scandal even made Steven Colbert joke that "hiybbprqag" meant "you got served."ROUND 2: Google social head (and ex-Microsoftie) Vic Gundotra reveals the Microsoft-Nokia smartphone deal by tweeting "Two turkeys don't make an eagle."Not only did Gundotra break Microsoft's cover -- Google had also been negotiating with Nokia -- but he also managed to get a good rip on both companies in the process.See the rest of the story at Business InsiderPlease follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.See Also:For The First Time Ever, Smartphones Outsold PCs Last QuarterGoogle Is Testing A Secret New Gadget In Four CitiesTHE APPLE INVESTOR: Apple Pushes To Become Third Largest Handset Maker In The World

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