My take is this: the whole Google ethos is that they are trying to have the best algorithm to give the best results. Outside of this sting they have always been at pains to put forward the view that nothing is manually ranked.
I think the same thing applies to Bing here: if they have a generic algorithm that ranks results based on toolbar (or other data) it could be easy to see how their data is skewed by Google given the amount of traffic Google search gets compared to the rest of the internets. This seems fine to me.
But if their algorithm does stuff with activity on google.com because it is google.com then this is a pretty clear foul - it is both essentially copying, and the equivalent of manually ranking results (specifically, Google results)
The corollary of this is that if their algorithm is generic, then it will still work if Google were to cease to exist. If it's not generic, it would be useless without Google.
I think the same thing applies to Bing here: if they have a generic algorithm that ranks results based on toolbar (or other data) it could be easy to see how their data is skewed by Google given the amount of traffic Google search gets compared to the rest of the internets. This seems fine to me.
But if their algorithm does stuff with activity on google.com because it is google.com then this is a pretty clear foul - it is both essentially copying, and the equivalent of manually ranking results (specifically, Google results)
The corollary of this is that if their algorithm is generic, then it will still work if Google were to cease to exist. If it's not generic, it would be useless without Google.