MSN: We Don't Steal From Google

MSNDude, the MSN representative who talks on forums, much like GoogleGuy, showed up on Webmasterworld to talk about all the excitement about the new engine. Among other things, he said this:

Also regarding relevance, there has been some speculation on some online forums about MSNBot using Google search result pages to build our index. Let us set the record straight – that is simply not true. We respect robots.txt and as a result we will not crawl Google’s search result pages.

GoogleGuy responds:

Hey msndude, thanks for the pointers, and thanks for debunking the notion that MSN is crawling via scraping Google's index somehow. I saw an email that someone wrote to us, and it didn't sound like something MSN would do. Glad to hear it from the source though. :)

In case it didn't come across well in my post above, I think it's great that MSN is launching this new look at their technology preview. The search geek in me really enjoys horsing around with a new search engine, and it also helps to raise the awareness of how important search is in everyday life these days.

Am I the only person who finds the idea of a MSNDude / GoogleGuy team-up intriguing?

Anyway, the point is that there has been some speculation that MSN got some of their search results from Google, as though Microsoft's crawler wasn't going around the web like crazy. RustyBrick at Search Engine Roundtable doesn't think its true, and brings in a Search Engine Watch forum post by Danny Sullivan that shows why someone would make that mistaken assumption.