I mentioned this in another article, but I have yet to see evidence that demonstrates that bing is parsing google's queries either from a) the url of the referrer, or b) directly on the google results page, yet many people on HN have asserted as such, generally exhibiting a false dilemma fallacy.
An alternative is that the bing toolbar is collecting 2-tuples "<search_string_in_toolbar, next_href_clicked>" and sending these back to microsoft (regardless of the search provider selected). I would consider this "click stream data" and seems to agree with statements in the above article. Additionally, since it doesn't involve parsing hrefs it seems like the easier solution (and the one I'm going to tentatively assume by Occam's razor).
Just to be clear, it does not have to be the case that the bing toolbar is collecting data entered directly into the google search box. Indeed, google could have tested for this by having a control group where they entered search queries without using the toolbar search box, however from the details released so far we cannot conclude they did this (read: google hasn't released enough specifics about the test they conducted, and it's far from being reproducible with the current details).
Additionally, why do many in the HN community think this google specific? I understand that google isn't claiming "bing copied just google" but that seems to be the consensus within HN and the arguments of foul play (see the countless posts asking if there exists code that specifies google: "if string contains 'google' then..."). I'd like to see a test where users entered a pathological string in the toolbar with an alternative search provider specified (EDIT: not bing or google), clicked on a low ranking result (low ranking, or not appearing at all on bing for those keywords), and see if it pops up higher on bing at a later time.
An alternative is that the bing toolbar is collecting 2-tuples "<search_string_in_toolbar, next_href_clicked>" and sending these back to microsoft (regardless of the search provider selected). I would consider this "click stream data" and seems to agree with statements in the above article. Additionally, since it doesn't involve parsing hrefs it seems like the easier solution (and the one I'm going to tentatively assume by Occam's razor).
Just to be clear, it does not have to be the case that the bing toolbar is collecting data entered directly into the google search box. Indeed, google could have tested for this by having a control group where they entered search queries without using the toolbar search box, however from the details released so far we cannot conclude they did this (read: google hasn't released enough specifics about the test they conducted, and it's far from being reproducible with the current details).
Additionally, why do many in the HN community think this google specific? I understand that google isn't claiming "bing copied just google" but that seems to be the consensus within HN and the arguments of foul play (see the countless posts asking if there exists code that specifies google: "if string contains 'google' then..."). I'd like to see a test where users entered a pathological string in the toolbar with an alternative search provider specified (EDIT: not bing or google), clicked on a low ranking result (low ranking, or not appearing at all on bing for those keywords), and see if it pops up higher on bing at a later time.