[attrition] rant: Layman-"Hackers" Driving Up Searches for Beef Jerky

[Dee Dee Winters]

http://attrition.org/security/rants/bing01.html

Mon Apr 15 22:21:12 EST 2010
By: d2d

A foreword is in order here: To all those people, including acquaintances, 
who have thoroughly enjoyed the living hell out of ClubBing prizes, I 
apologize if this causes you stress and discomfort. Fear not though, as I 
doubt it'll bring about any substantial change, and I'm certain you'll 
continue receiving your "Bing" branded crud in the mail on a weekly basis. 
Unfortunately for me, I never got around to trying to build a "Bing" prize 
room, but I can assure you that I've lived vicariously through watching 
your bots run in the background every minute of every day. But I 
digress...

Microsoft's Bing search engine has been steadily gaining ground since its 
release last May, according to various media and blog reports. Some 
articles cite a gain in market share by some 70% of the inherited market 
share of Microsoft Live, Bing's predecessor. While it doesn't appear to be 
taking share away from Google, it does seem to be chipping away at all 
other ancillary search engines on its way up the rankings ladder. 
Microsoft has invested some 100 million dollars in marketing for Bing, and 
it seems to be more-or-less working.

There are, however, some other factors that might be boosting Bing's 
search popularity. One of them is a bribery scheme called "Bing Cashback". 
It's essentially "Google Product Search" (looks almost identical to it 
too), only you get a percentage of cash back by purchasing items through 
it. Nothing terribly revolutionary there, but it may be helping their 
rankings.

A much more fascinating topic from a security perspective is their Club 
Bing project.

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