The technical aspect is plain. Copying Google is a great idea. If you're tying to predict the weather and are given a general bag of indicators, the one that is a well-reasoned expert opinion of the weather is probably a very important source. It may even account for a majority of your own predictive power. It would be stupid to ignore it if your goal is to simply make the best prediction.
Likewise, aggressively scraping Google is a smart move. Then you add some new innovation atop it and have a real opportunity to return more informed responses. This is done all the time in science.
In some sense Google simply has to acknowledge that they are a pretty important segment of the web, not some separate entity from it.
So only the legal/ethical question remains. In science it's unethical to work atop someone else's project without crediting them. I doubt Bing would be interested in adding a Powered by Google bar. Moreover, since Bing could directly profit off Google's work undercutting actual algorithmic progress through pure marketing competition (hypothetically, anyway, I am sure that Bing has added tech too) I feel like it's better to restrict this sort of thing.
I think it's fair to say that much like commercial images on Flickr or sample songs, it is unethical and illegal to copy digital services and goods then either claim them your own or profit off of them. I think Google results are suitably close in spirit to this.
So maybe Bing and Girl Talk need to team up and discover and defend the ethical rights of sampling digital goods.
Likewise, aggressively scraping Google is a smart move. Then you add some new innovation atop it and have a real opportunity to return more informed responses. This is done all the time in science.
In some sense Google simply has to acknowledge that they are a pretty important segment of the web, not some separate entity from it.
So only the legal/ethical question remains. In science it's unethical to work atop someone else's project without crediting them. I doubt Bing would be interested in adding a Powered by Google bar. Moreover, since Bing could directly profit off Google's work undercutting actual algorithmic progress through pure marketing competition (hypothetically, anyway, I am sure that Bing has added tech too) I feel like it's better to restrict this sort of thing.
I think it's fair to say that much like commercial images on Flickr or sample songs, it is unethical and illegal to copy digital services and goods then either claim them your own or profit off of them. I think Google results are suitably close in spirit to this.
So maybe Bing and Girl Talk need to team up and discover and defend the ethical rights of sampling digital goods.