Bing Encroaching on Google's Territory?

The search giant, Google, revolutionized the industry in 1997 when it came out with it's relatively new way of searching. Instead of finding the number of times a word appeared on the page, the engine would rank pages by the number of pages and the importance of those pages. Now, many companies have followed suit, including Yahoo!, Dogpile, and more recently, Bing.

Lately, Bing and Google have been having issues over the search material and how Bing comes by its search results. Google is claiming that Microsoft is pulling search results from Google and using them as their own. While there has been no mention of any legal action on Google's part, the questions is, would it be valid?

The questions comes down to this: first, is Microsoft taking search results from Google, and if so, does it go against copyright and trademark laws? Does Google have the rights to the results of its searches?

First off, the question of whether Microsoft is taking search results from Google is a question for Bing. However, if Microsoft is indeed using search results from Google, that would be an infringement on Google's trademark of PageRank, the software that generates all of Google's search results. They would be using the program without Google's permission to make a monetary gain. However, unless Google can prove that Microsoft is using its search results for Bing, Google really does not have a case for trademark infringement.

The bigger question is whether Google has the sole rights to the results of its searches. Some would argue that Google is providing those results for free use, which means that anyone could use those results for their own and there would be no legal complications. However, Google's software PageRank is producing those results. Google does have the rights to the software, but it gives the results to millions of people on a daily basis. While some companies, such as Microsoft, may believe that this information is up for grabs, it shouldn't be. These other search engine companies should be required to have their own software for producing search results.