IE7 promo page

I was going to read some Penny Arcade, but Robert Scoble invoked me. Jeremy points out that Google had an IE7 promo page that looked remarkably similar to a Yahoo! IE7 promo page.

I can only speak for me personally on this. If Jeremy looked into it and says that it wasn’t a template from Microsoft, I believe him. That would mean that the Yahoo! page was used as a template for Google’s IE7 promo page. I can’t say why someone at Google would decide to do that, but to the Yahoo! UI designer whose page was copied: my apologies. In my personal opinion, it sucks when someone else copies a page layout without attribution.

It can take a lot of work to come up with creative HTML. I remember when Google did a bunch of UI research to decide on a distinctive look for AdWords. We decided to go with pastel boxes with a darker border on the right-hand side of the search results:

Google Sponsored boxes

Not too long afterwards, Yahoo! changed their side ads to pastel boxes with a darker border:

Yahoo Sponsored boxes

Then at some point, Google decided to go for a fresh look. After a ton of prototypes, testing, and internal research, we decided on a blue background for the top ads, with a blue line separating ads on the right-hand side:

Google Sponsored bar

Not too long afterwards, Yahoo! changed their top ads to a blue background, made the right-hand ads on a white background, and added a blue line separating the ads:

Yahoo Sponsored bar

Of course, changing the just UI alone can cause weirdness, so it’s good that Yahoo! changed their ads to be the same number of characters as Google.

Yup, getting copied without credit can suck. I’m glad that Jeremy was so observant and pointed this out immediately. Google has already changed the page, but I trust Yahoo will be on the lookout for copying in the future. ๐Ÿ˜‰

185 Responses to IE7 promo page (Leave a comment)

  1. I think you should both report each other to Chilling Effects.Org. ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Hehehe

  3. well at least they didn’t steal your anti-aliased smooth look =P

  4. Michael, it wouldn’t really be balanced. Google would have to remove a single page that was seen maybe a few thousand times since Google put the page up on Friday. But tens of millions of people have seen Yahoo’s search results every day for the last couple years. Imagine if all those billions of page views had to be undone.

    Okay, back to Penny Arcade for me. Jenstar, good to see you. ๐Ÿ™‚

  5. Competitors mimic what what works for their counterparts? And steal design and content? I am shocked. Shocked! Shocked I tell you. What’s next people just downloading a site and publishing it as their own? What’s that? They do? Oh my…heaven.

    Oh well, at least it looks like everyone responded quickly and fixed it which is the best outcome we could hope for. You even go over the top and publically mention it which is more than we could expect. Sucks that it had to happen, but well handled. kudos.

  6. I guess Yahoo’s present motto is:

    Why Reinvent the Wheel?

    Let GOOG do the hard developement job for both of us ๐Ÿ™‚

  7. Thanks Matt! Well done.

    Note to self: don’t point out the sins of others if you’re guilty of same and/or worse sins yourself.

  8. I had decided to skip it, Robert, so I’m glad you poked me into saying something. Your persuasion powers are strong…

  9. Matt, that was a gem. Well done :-).

  10. Stealing good UI is different than stealing good art design.

    In the case of the IE7 splash page, the art design was lifted. In the case of the sponsored links, it’s possible that what was being lifted from Google was UI — user interface and how it relates to usability — rather than art design choices. This is fundamentally different for a number of reasons. For one, “originality” isn’t really a positive attribute for UI. UI’s don’t strive to be original; only functional. And as new insights are made in UI, they evolve across the industry, with the best UI winning out and becoming more commonplace, while the bad stuff disappears (hopefully).

    Now, I don’t know enough about the Sponsored Links thing to tell whether or not the design changes were for usability or just for the sake of art-design; I’m just pointing out the possibility. As for the IE7 page: folks don’t blame “Google”, blame a designer who works at Google. People make mistakes all the time.

    It kind of reminds me of this:

    http://commercial-archive.com/508.php

    (no, I’m not trying to invoke Godwin’s law)

  11. Of course, both pages look a lot like the ones built by Mozilla for FF and Thunderbird… ๐Ÿ˜‰

  12. Wow, that was fast. And nice humor too…

  13. Good post Mr. Cutts.

    Very funny.

  14. hehe; funny ๐Ÿ™‚

    right on robert to persuade Matt to post

  15. According to the comments on JZ’s page, the HTML was completely different.

    So it wasn’t copied, merely inspired by. ๐Ÿ™‚

    As with many design concepts online…

  16. The HTML may have been different, but the image was very clearly lifted directly off Yahoo’s page and then airbrushed to remove the Yahoo logo.

    To compare that blatent copyright violation to Yahoo kinda sorta imitating Google’s look and feel is disingenuous at best. You make it sound as if Google invented pastel boxes with dark outlines.

  17. I feel that Ken missed the mark on this.

    It wasn’t about inventing the design itself, but rather the implementation. Notice how both SERPs are looking very similar, and you might be forgiven for thinking that both companies were related.

    That, or both companies have exceedingly prodigious designers whom happen to hit on the same idea (which we know is hardly possible).

  18. I am no Google or Yahoo employee. Heck I am not even a computer guy. But I think everyone should see these two links.

    http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/9711/comparisonbu7.jpg
    http://chir.ag/stuff/yahoo-to-google.gif

    I think that can shed a lot of light.

  19. We are all – both the guilty partners and the victims- when it comes to to imitating the creative efforts of others.

    Google has a number of lawsuits pending that would attest to that fact (as do many others).

    In fact, if you go back into time, and uncovered even the most obsure Web projects, you might find that someone previously had already created a protoype of many of the high profile design concepts or business models that exist today.

  20. pkchukiss – the thing is that the implementation (in particular the graphic) was stolen. If the html looked the same but the graphic was clearly original, this would have been much less interesting.

    Matt Cutts – the test for copyright violation is not spiffiness. Microsoft has given permission to use the IE7 logo. Yahoo has not given permission to use the graphic they created around the IE logo.

    There’s a huge difference between “reminds me of” and “copied and modified”.

  21. Well, to be fair, Google did copy the idea of doing sponsored ads in the first place, back in the day, (from Overture, now Y!SM), so if Yahoo! want to copy the design, hey, what are you gonna do?

    Back in your box sunshine…

  22. Ok. Google has updated its page.

  23. Ken, I know that Google put a *lot* of person-hours into researching and prototyping to select the best designs for our ads. I think it’s a fair point that Yahoo followed Google with very similar HTML ad layouts (twice!). The ads on Yahoo are seen tens of millions of times a day, while this page went out on a Friday, was detected on Monday and was changed within a few hours. In terms of impact, more people have seen Yahoo’s copying, in my opinion. ๐Ÿ™‚

  24. Matt

    Just because Mrs. not home, you don’t need to stay awake the whole night ๐Ÿ™‚

  25. Good reminder, Harith. I’ve got a full day tomorrow too. Okay, going to bed now..

  26. Why are you guys fighting like small kids? I mean as though Jermy’s posting itself wasn’t enough, you had to reply back with something similar? Shame on both of you guys.

  27. I am a Google maniac and rarely use Yahoo, but still I have to say, BULLSHIT YOU POSTED!

    If you want to apologize for the copied promo page, just say SORRY. You don’t need to mention or imply that Yahoo, on the other hand, had been copying Google.

    I am disappointed.

  28. I don’t know Matt, Yahoo had a search box way before Google did. That’s a lot of copying right there. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  29. That’s weird. As I know, Google won’t want to hurt its reputation just because of laziness. In my opinion, the ads color issue aren’t as worse as the IE7 page template. Almost 90% of the page is the same, just that the logo and specs are not.

  30. Heh! Excellent response Matt…and good on you for trying to defuse this slightly prickly situation with a pinch of humour.

  31. I’m going with scoble. It’s not doing any better to point at someone who made other mistakes.

    you should simply do better instead of showing that childish behaviour, sorry.

  32. Agree with Pip’s comment above. You shouldn’t stoop to pointing fingers at somebody just cause a finger is being pointed at you !

    If Google did copy Yahoo’s page design, best way to handle that is to say ‘Oops ! we messed up’, change it & move on … & if Google didn’t copy Yahoo’s design … state that !

  33. A great post and I agree with Robert… Wonder if Jeremy will have anything to say on that matter. Pip, I think Robert (although he can speak for himself here) was speaking that jeremy shouldn’t have pointed this out as yahoo was guilty of the same thing. At least that is how I read it ๐Ÿ™‚

  34. Hey Matt, thanks for coming over and pointing out this follow up post. I did one as well, encouraging people to read this post. Both you and Jeremy are well respected in this industry so when the two of you speak up, people listen.

    I think though, some people will take this situation (unfortunately) as Google being a big “bully”, instead of a compliment to Yahoo’s UI folks. Hopefully you’re post here will debunk most of that. I also say good job Robert Scoble for prodding you into making this post!

    Now what are you going to do when your wife gets back?? Answering questions for Rand, Debunking CIA & Terrorism Rumors, and Clarifications – you’ve been Busy!! We are all going to go into withdrawal, you know that right? ๐Ÿ™‚

  35. To admit one is wrong is smart marketing. Next!

  36. Isn’t there a difference between copying ideas (pastel boxes for example) and copying actual content? The second example you provide is probably content, but it’s nowhere close to the lazy theft that went on in the IE7 page.

    Even the corrected Google page still has text that was originally ripped off of the Yahoo! page in this instance.

  37. umm didn’t yahoo have overture before google had adwords, so didn’t you copy them …

  38. Good Post, Matt.

    I think copying a page (to the extent where an image was doctored in order to remove a competitors logo) is on a slightly different level than mimicking a simple color scheme (especially in Web2.0 land where everything is pastel-ified anyway).

    But the whole thing does seem to have been blown somewhat out of proportion. Someone at Google did the wrong thing and copied a Yahoo page. Maybe it was an innocent mistake… maybe it was lazyness… or maybe it was just someone on a bad hair day. But I mean, really, the net has been a-buzz all afternoon as if Google started using an exclamation point in their name or introduced a Butler as their online persona.

    Simple mistake… quickly rectified… basic apology… no big deal.

    I mean… who uses internet explorer now-a-days anyway? ๐Ÿ˜‰ jk

  39. Hi!

    Anyone visited my site quickly knew that this is a design based on a completly different theory of human visuality. Most other site works with the same format as it is used in books (black on white), but I am thinking they are wrong. In books there are arguments to use it but this arguments are not applicable for computer screens. My argument is: a book does not glow
    like ouir screens. This make the process very different, because we all see with light, it’s absence and it’s colour. An oculist can say you that looking for a long time in a lamp (like our white screens are) to identify the little black font will strain our eyes more than needfull. White sites looks clean and normal to us, but is this argument good enough? Maybe I plead like an old man and today are most users young people but why does not use sytems wtih a better contrast or make it eligible to us which design the individual user want?

    To copy my desigs isn’t new to me. Someone asked me with an e-Mail about details of my agate lamps and get a answer she didn’t able to work with. Month later she desided to make a comment at glassartists.org with compliments and the same question (therefor she registered there and now she has an empty gallery). I answered and gave her a little bit more des-information she wanted, hopefully she worked with it!

    Greetings Karl Heinz

  40. I’m usually not a frequent commenter but I was waiting for this type of post. Thanks for the great come back post. ๐Ÿ˜€

  41. Pwned?

  42. I think they’re still pissed about that thing where you guys used two o’s in your name. I mean, it was their idea first to have two o’s and get into search. Why should anybody else be allowed.

  43. Ummm…

    Correct me if I am wrong, Google settled out of court with Overture for basically stealing the concept of Search Based CPC Advertising before they went public. This game has been going on for a LONG time…

  44. Isnt it possible that through Yahoo’s UI testing they arrived at similar conclusions to google in the design of their ads (color, spacing, size etc)? It would not seem to be possible for the Google copycat to claim the same.

  45. A really sad response. Why not just admit that you screwed up and take the high ground?

    Sad.

  46. A: Tolkein writes a series of books which inspire a genre

    B: Somebody scratches off Tolkein’s name and puts in their own

    Which is closer to what Yahoo did, and which is closer to what Google did?

  47. And who is the real winner here? Microsoft! Not only does their product get an explosion of visibility but IE7 also gets as dedicated download pages from both the biggest names in search.

  48. The fact that you came about it the way you did shows you are an ass. Ohhh, we did wrong but look at Yahoo, they really did wrong. They are the baddies here. No, I’m not a Yahoo employee. Mr. Z is a bit of a whiney idiot too.

  49. graywolf,

    I thought Yahoo BOUGHT Overture AFTER Google had Adwords. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

  50. You know what’s weird here, as far as all the copying stuff is concerned It doesn’t bother me anymore, simply because there’s so much of it.

    Affiliate pages.
    Content hijacking.
    Website templates.
    Dating sites.
    Even porn (yeah, I went there, so shoot me).

    Those all come to mind right off the top.

    Originality and the web are almost mutually exclusive these days. I just don’t see these examples as being that big a deal from either side.

  51. Well, I’ve had my morning laugh. Thanks Matt. But when I first saw Jeremy’s post, the first thing I thought of was another UI change that was made.

  52. Hanford, it depends how far the copying of the UI goes. Compare the Apple vs. Microsoft case on GUI development, (which was a bit cheeky if you look at the prior work that came out of Xerox PARC).

    I think Yahoo! have been pushing their luck with how they’ve developed their ads in line with their biggest competitor.

  53. I’m not sure if tit for tat is a good way to run a muti-billion dollar company. “They did it to us first” is not what I expected to hear.

  54. I had respect for you before you wrote this childish, arrogant I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I “apology”. Way to blow it.

    And your spam protection doesn’t accept floats.

  55. As I posted here (http://centernetworks.com/matt-cutts-yahoo-done-stole-us-first), I wonder if we are about to begin SearchMania I. Might be a fun bracket to setup. That Jeeves (oh wait he was fired) really packs a mean right uppercut!

  56. Touche!

    Funny how quick people who behave in a certain manner, are the first to point out that same behaviour when someone else does it.

  57. Matt: It’s not just the sponsored ad layout either… have you seen a Panama? Campaigns and adgroups, cpc cost model…

  58. Nice response, Matt – way to own up to a mistake… a few of your competitors could learn a thing or two from you…

  59. speaking of IE7… don’t restart your computer today, you’ll find a nice new present when you do. (if you have automatic updates turned on that is).

    Apparantley using “express install”, telling it not to install IE7, then checking “don’t ask me to install these again” only lasts for about 10 minutes before it asks again.

    as for the “don’t blame google blame the person”… no, you have to blame both. I highly doubt that person has the ability to publish things to Google.com without them being seen by somebody else first. Somebody somewhere had to see that page before it went live, and this person should have known better.

    The blame falls both on the copycat and the management. Depending on the situation the copycat should probably be terminated. (I’m allowing for the possibility that a MS representative mistakenly told a Google employee that it was a MS template or something..)

    If I did this at my job, I’d be looking through want ads… but my boss would have recieved a very stern lecture.

  60. (some typo corrected, apology for not doing it earlier)

    Matt, you are not seeing the difference between Yahooโ€™s copying of concepts, which is industrywide practice to make the services competitive vs Google copying Yahoo page is like ripping off a DVD for reselling. The former would be covered by patent laws, if Google had filed and get approved in their patent, proving the novelty of concepts. The latter would be covered under copyright laws, which need not be filed.

    Matt, you may not see the difference. But Google as a company does. Google understands that it did a mistake. Evidence: they have corrected it. The attempt to correct is an admission of guilt. The only things remaining for Google to do are explicitly accepting the guilt and give Yahoo people credit and apology.

  61. Interesting how many domains have been registered with Yahoogle in them, shows that people think that the 2 of you are so linked anyway ๐Ÿ˜‰

    Also interesting that you post this on the same day that you were granted a patent on the look of the SERP

    http://searchengineland.com/061212-075651.php

  62. Patent # 6,269,361

  63. It’s a fairly lame response Matt. How much classier would it have been simply to acknowledge the mistake and move on?

    The fact that it came up is probably indicative of the fact that Google has absolutely no idea about graphic design full stop and I’m guessing some poor googler on minimum wage knocked it up so they could get out of the office before 9 in the evening.

    and trying to claim some sort of breakthrough award for “pastel boxes with a darker border”? Please…

    This is Google in a nutshell. The company has produced very very very very little in terms of genuinely new or original ideas. What it has done, very successfully, is develop further or buy a lot of existing ideas. Being constantly overpraised for that and basically in love with itself leads Google to mistake success for originality or creativity and feeds into an institutionalised disregard for the originality and creativity of others, as evidenced by this whole advert brouhaha.

    The point about “Ken, I know that Google put a *lot* of person-hours into researching and prototyping to select the best designs for our ads.” kind of backs this up. The amount of manhours your team put into coming up with an absolutely bog standard selection is utterly irrelevant. You assume that just because some people in Google spent time on something it is automatically valuable, unique and in some sort of way proprietary. Another equally rational explanation is that they all got into some sort of management groupfuck and all they could come up with was “uh, well, i guess boxes with borders might do it”.

    ah i give up…good luck to you all. be google, be the best, enjoy TGIF and keep drinking the kool-aid…suckers

  64. We could also takl of the http://search.yahoo.com page, which is a mere copy of google homepage.

  65. LOL

    Oh that is brilliant, what a fantastic comback, how do you like those apples Mr Zawodny…

  66. And no one in Web 2.0 has copied the reflection effect, correct? Geez, it’s like a bunch of children! The worst part is that they are putting this crap all over the net advertising IE7! They should have gotten all of the publicity by copying a Firefox ad.

  67. Ed, sorry that my spam protection plug-in doesn’t accept floats. ๐Ÿ™‚

  68. Matt, you make some nice comparisons, but you’re way off in comparing the copying of an entire page, graphics and all, plus swapping a logo, to the changing of a UI-like issue that brought Yahoo into the “norm” of having blue-colored links and a background color behind an ad!

    You’ve got a point on the character-count thing, that was more obvious yet an attempt to copy the new online ad standards. Google won that topic with a better standard and advertiser’s likely asked Yahoo to alter it’s ad length to conform.

    But this here is a case of some Google employee stealing another person/company’s art work and page design blatantly with no cause to stand behind such as industry or user-interface standards whatsoever.

    I’m not sure why a fight is more important than admitting you’re wrong and moving on.

  69. Good morning Matt

    Welcome back to the search engines battle fields. May GOOG emerge victorious ๐Ÿ™‚

  70. Um… don’t you think it’s sorta funny that nobody bothered to point out Yahoo! copying Google’s pastels? Twice?

    Perhaps, we are all unobservant. Perhaps people who search Google never bother with Yahoo!. Or maybe it was simply a case that designer at Yahoo looked at Google’s page, and subconsciously designed pastel boxes. No UI research involved. Let’s say Yahoo! allows it’s designers to design “unscientifically”.

    I still think that lifting an image off your competitors site is a sin on a whole new level.

    Unlike above, it is highly unlikely that someone at Google was “inspired” by Yahoo! and created a near identical copy. I mean, he sure would have a super-human memory to get down to make the image exactly the same size to the pixel. What say?

    Still, nice attempt at humor. We all need some humor at this current moment of disaster. Kudos for keeping up Googlers’ spirits. “Yeah, we’re evil. But heck, so is Yahoo!”

    PS: No, I don’t work for Yahoo!

  71. Matt you should go into politics!

    You even got Scoble to agree when his good “limo and lunch” advice should have been followed.

    Sure, graphic copying by Google is trivial (though very surprising) but “copying” the contextual advertising UI would seem to me to be effectively the same as “copying” a basic click bar design or “copying” Overture’s pay per click model. These latter copy activities are probably perfectly legal and reflect innovations as they hit the marketplace where lifting graphics seems kind of bogus at the billion dollar corporate level. That said, I don’t see people apologizing to artists when they steal their music either.

  72. I’ve been using IE7 for a few months and LOVE IT !!!

    Those google toolbars really detract from the slim appearance anyway. Where i work the first thing we do is strip all the goog crap that comes on the dells and go with fresh ms image!

  73. you are trying to defend yourself by telling that they too copied.

    if anyone is copying you that it is good that at least you are on right track!!!

    changing the page-layout was a good option.

  74. Hi Matt. Regular reader of your blog, and a Google fan. Liked the last debunking post. But this one, not really.

    I mean you can not defend what Google did by saying that in past Yahoo has also copied stuff from you. That is acting like a kid. I thought Google’s motto was “Don’t be evil” and not “Don’t be evil, unless the other guy is”.

    This thing definitely needs a public apology on Google Blog and not mud slinging. And I always believed that if Google ever copied they would not do so without some extra added bit to make the thing better. Seems like this was hasty job!! Expected better from you guys.

  75. You guys could have simply said “My bad” and moved on.

  76. this is a childish argument.

    are you suggesting that yahoo was copying the design of adwords and search results? so is google now owning the “exclusive rights” to having pastel color in a box with a dark border?

    It’s quite obvious that “someone” at google is copying yahoo’s page, but the fact that “other” google’s employee is trying to defend it by suggesting yahoo also did this, and the fact that google itself is not saying anything publicly really have a negative impression on your mentality/principal

  77. Um, no offense but comparing similar UI to similar design isn’t apples to oranges. You say that google spend a lot of research coming up with the best placement/colors and such, could it be conceivable that Yahoo! could also come to the same conclusion?

    Google doesn’t hold copyrights on pastel boxes with blue borders. The Yahoo! design in this case was clearly lifted (logo chopped out, etc). How can you even compare the two cases?

  78. er, that should read IS apples to oranges

  79. Full disclosure: I am a former Yahoo employee.

    While I don’t think that this is the biggest deal in the world and probably only rates any kind of attention becuase Jeremy posted about it, I’d have to say that the cases you list above are apples-and-oranges.

    In the case of UI improvements on the SERPs, both companies follow a regime of rigorous A-B testing driven by direct feedback from user behavior. In such a regime, there are bound to be convergences on particular UI idioms. Yahoo runs dozens of different UI versions at all times and selects for the best performing. If Google makes significant changes to their UI, presumably selected based on A-B testing against a very large group of users, it is natural that Yahoo would run something similar within one of their buckets to see how it performs and it is also quite likely that it would perform well, since Yahoo’s user population is really not very different from Google’s.

    Under the somewhat limited framework of the current SERP model — a UI not invented by either Yahoo or Google, but endlessly refined by BOTH companies as well as all the other players in this space — these kind of convergences are natural. You have picked out one or two examples of UI changes made by Google and later adopted by Yahoo, but can you honestly claim that UI changes made by other search engine companies are not closely watched and sometimes tested and subsequently adopted on the Google SERP?

    In the case pointed out by Jeremy, someone working for Google directly took an image constructed by an employee of Yahoo, did some minor and rather amateur touchups to it, and incorporated it onto a page that also looked remarkably similar to the corresponding page at Yahoo. Unlike the SERP, this page has not been forged under the same kind of intensive testing driven by user behavior, so little convergence would be expected. Again, not really the biggest deal in the world, but in some ways reflective of a pretty extreme level of laziness on the part of that Google employee, given the relatively unimportant role of that particular image and that particular page layout in achieving the function of that page.

  80. Anyone else notice that the screenshot of the new google ie7 promo shows http://www.google.com as PR7 in the toolbar? ๐Ÿ™‚

  81. “Itโ€™s a fairly lame response Matt. How much classier would it have been simply to acknowledge the mistake and move on?”

    Johan, blame it on a late-night reaction. I can’t speak on Google’s behalf why the page was copied, but I do apologize. People expect Google to do better than that, I agree that we should.

  82. I gotta be honest it’s pretty hilarious that someone would actually rip the page off completely (including the tabs in the browser pane). To be honest, we have to admit that much of web design comes from inspiration from other designs. To literally lift off a page is a different story though.

    Johan … you sound pretty mad about Google’s success. Although I do have to agree with your comment, “You assume that just because some people in Google spent time on something it is automatically valuable, unique and in some sort of way proprietary”, when applying the comment to google photos (picasaweb.google.com). Google photos seems like a totally unfinished product in comparison to Flickr.

  83. So if I say, I didnt like your apology either, is that copying even if do I really think it is crap? Or is it an original idea?

    Either way – 2/10 on the apology.

    Hmmmm…

  84. Both parties are at fault and both have a reason to complain. It just seems strange for Google to do what they did; what is the motive? Yahoo’s motive in copying the adWords format is pretty clear: Google is the most successful so mimic #1. For Google to copy Yahoo’s promo page: …? The page looks good but I would expect that any designer at Google could come up with something that would be relatively as successful without blatantly copying and pasting from a competitor. It’s hard for me to see the reason in doing this and I am really curious to hear the explanation from whoever made that decision.

  85. Am I the only one who noticed that the comparison screenshots show a search for “n800jl”. Looking this up on Google shows an aircraft registration look-up at the top of the Google page, which shows this is a glider owned by a “BONAR FRED” in Orange county. OK, maybe this isn’t too significant, but I just found it mildly interesting.

    For those who say Matt acted childish, you need to grow a sense of humor.

  86. Fortunately, Google patented their results page design:
    http://google-blog.dirson.com/post.new/0416/

  87. Personally, I could care less about the whole subject. Matt works for Google and by nature would want to express his view of the situation, which he did. Do I think the comparison is the same? No. Do I care? No. Matt could have just said “sorry guys”, but let’s not forget, Matt is not a google computer, he is a real person with a real personality. If you want a more simple/boring comment, you could ask Google Legal I’m sure. Matt – I have no problem with what you said, and I’m not a Google hater or fanboy – just a guy who uses many different Internet services.

  88. Johan wrote:

    This is Google in a nutshell. The company has produced very very very very little in terms of genuinely new or original ideas. What it has done, very successfully, is develop further or buy a lot of existing ideas.

    Johan:

    Nobody ever produces anything that is truly original. Everything is a development of something else.

    What Google did do, at a time when ALL search engines were struggling to make money – and losing the struggle, was to launch a search engine that didn’t focus on making money. Instead they focussed on producing far superior results to all other engines, due to their PageRank algorithm – a development of something else. Then they added a means of making money by including advertisements in their pages, in a different way to the other engines – also a development of something else.

    With that, there was suddenly a search engine that was making loads of money. It was so incredible that the other big companies copied Google. Both Yahoo! and MSN were around in search long before Google was even a twinkle in Brin and Page’s eyes, but they didn’t own a search engine – they used other engines’ results instead. Seeing Google’s success, they raced to jump on the bandwagon.

    And you don’t think that Google has created anything new??? Hell, they made search engines VERY profitable. They “created” a profitable search engine when all other engines were failing. That was new. Ever since then, the other engines have merely followed Google – and not particularly successfully by comparison.

    I don’t think I need to go into the rest of Google’s creativity, because that part on its own is so huge.

  89. I agree with Johan.

    Matt, a response that basically says “but they copied too” sounds straight out of the playground.

    Settle down class.

  90. hi – adwords may not be the best example of yahoo stealing from google, considering that google stole the idea of AdWords from Yahoo/Overture and had to pay them $300 million in a patent-infringement settlement! So actually this is inadvertently another example of google _not_ being original and just using other people’s ideas!

  91. the last time i did name calling and pointing fingers was in 10th grade not after that .. hmm may be they are 10th grade people who work with html now a days u never know there is nothing to actually code
    get a life guys

  92. jeez. we’re talking about a simple human mistake, right? the layout of a page has been copied. big deal. i just hope that the guy/gal who did this will not be punished to hard or maybe even fired. i have the feeling, that someone has to take his hat in the end and that it will be the weakest member of the team.

    instead of yahoo just being proud that they did such a good template that google could not top but instead copied it, everyone is whining about copying now. just wait until the lawyers from bith sides get involved now ๐Ÿ˜‰

    if i would have been yahoo, i woud not have made a fuss about i but would have made a commercial pointing this out and THAT would have been hilarious ๐Ÿ˜‰

  93. Pittbug

    “Anyone else notice that the screenshot of the new google ie7 promo shows http://www.google.com as PR7 in the toolbar?”

    It depends on which Datacenter google.com hit at any time. Here are few examples which illustrates different PRs values:

    google.com

    google.com

    google.com

    You see? its all about Datacenters ๐Ÿ™‚

  94. When I saw the two screenshots I thought it was ment as a joke by the google-designer. The copying is so ovious, that he couldn’t possibly think to get away with it. Maybe it was intendet as a message towards the Yahoo-Folks copying his ideas?

  95. I see I need to use a different name here, wouldn’t want to be confused with the other ‘Johan’. (No offense, I want to be original (pun intented)).

    hanford Said:”As for the IE7 page: folks donโ€™t blame โ€œGoogleโ€, blame a designer who works at Google. People make mistakes all the time.”

    Good point, I’ve been saying the same about Microsoft for at least 15 years. Not that anyone listens though. But there are people like you and me behind that big company name (see Matt’s spontanous reply, they are all mere mortals). It wasn’t a corporate decision or policy to copy something from Google, just an incompetent individual.

    It would be amazing (impossible) if Google, hence the people working there would never make mistakes. Yes, a ‘mistake’. I’m not referring to stealing the design, which obviously didn’t happen by accident, but to hiring the person who did it. He/she is fired right? “On standing foot” as we would say in – even though it sounds Chinese – the Netherlands.

  96. Google is copying Yahoo all the time!!

    Yahoo has had a search box, my, maps, finance. Google is copying them all. Kind of how MS copied Apple. Google is the MS in the internet biz.

  97. Sneaky^H^H^H^H^H^HCreative SEO pro’s steal^H^H^H^H^Hrewrite content in their own words all the time.

  98. PhilC:

    Wasn’t the entire basis for Google’s “making money by including advertisements in their pages” borrowed from Overture? Apparently it was, as they were ruled to be in violation of the Overture patent.

    Not to discount that Google is an incredibly profitable company. However, the idea for making search engines profitable based on contextual advertising was based on a patented idea from another company.

    Just something to think about.

  99. Nice thing here Matt.

    “I canโ€™t say why someone at Google would decide to do that, but to the Yahoo! UI designer whose page was copied: my apologies. In my personal opinion, it sucks when someone else copies a page layout without attribution.”

    Sometimes we fumble. And it takes a brave heart to admit.

  100. LOL! I love this post. Obviously, Jeremy doesn’t realize that every website–in some way, shape, or form– contains “borrowed” graphics, verbiage, color scheme, etc. YEAH, nobody likes to see their ideas copied so blatantly, but it doesn’t mean you need to put up such a fuss with all of the other worries we face on a daily basis. So shhhhhhhhh… relax with this nice warm cup of Shut the H3ll Up and a box of facial tissue. You’ll feel all better in the morning.

  101. Now children, behave.

  102. very disappointed, everybody can “borrow” but not google, since google represents the culture of “create, unique and innovation” …….. LOL

  103. Finding myself in the Google banned sinbin once again, I would love it if Yahoo was at least competing with or copying Google on Search, nevermind the other stuff …

    I just searched “Pakistan Hotels” on Yahoo.com to find #1 goes to a site under construction!

  104. Is the technology available to detect similar web pages? We own

    http://www.plauditdesign.com

    and I would like to find all the sites that look like it, such as:

    http://www.activecitizensforeducation.org/
    http://www.bowersfamilychiropractic.com/

    I am slightly aware of Neven Vision and Riya but haven’t seen anything that solves the problem of finding websites that look a lot like a given site.

  105. Beware of IE 7!

    Since one of our friends installed it on his computer, his router crashed and he has no Internet anymore.

    I think I will keep on with Firefox.

  106. Oooh. This is fun. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  107. Now this is the kind of Search Engine Smackdown I like to see! ๐Ÿ™‚

  108. BTW Matt, as long as were discussing copying…

    I was a GOTO.COM/Overture PPC customer from the beginning, long before AdWords ever came along. As a matter of fact, I was even in on their IPO back in the day, so trotting out how Yahoo is copying your AdWords layouts is a slippery slope my friend considering how you copied Overture’s concept of bid PPC in the first place.

    Did I say that out loud?

    Shhhhh…..

  109. Keniki: do you mean keniki.com? If you do, they didn’t.

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=keniki.com

  110. You are right Multi-Worded Adam. keniki.com isn’t banned, at least not yet ๐Ÿ™‚

    site:www.keniki.com

    Keniki : Search The Best of The Internet

    So.. I guess our friend Keniki owes Matt an apology ๐Ÿ˜‰

  111. So I can’t use pastex Boxes and Blue Color anymore just because GOOGLE used it? Duh! The point Jermey raised is valid and your response is pretty sissy here. THat’s other thing that Jeremy people stole the text from somt other side ๐Ÿ˜‰ but since there is no evidence yet so that text is kinda Yahoo’s creation.

  112. I just have to say….yahoo mail, just like the yahoo homepage, looks more like a spam site, filled with advertising, than an inbox or a homepage.

  113. It is really an interesting post. Humans Err and thats why they are humans. As mentioned earlier by others, probably the design team and the Lead who approved it are the ones to be blamed. May be the Lead, might not have even seen the Yahoo Design, which is why he might have approved.
    Now to the point of copying, every one copies and it is true. Probably every one jumped into this dialogue because they didnt expect “Google” to do this, even if it is a slip with out its knowledge. So Google should rather feel happy that people watch Google and value what Google stands for…”Do No Evil”. Just like how parents cannot tolerate their kids doing a mistake, most of people have raised their concerns because they dont expect Google to make a mistake. Now the issue of UI, i dont think i would agree with Mattcutts, certain features are presented in the industry accepted standard. For example the search results interface, it just followed the existing pattern. I am not blaming Google, the point that i am trying to bring to attention is Yahoo has just followed what is the best UI and Google should feel happy for creating the standards ๐Ÿ˜‰ Hanford has shed the similar thought earlier in the post….oh my goodness now i am copying hanford……Anyway Google has acknowledged it and has changed its page…lets hope something similar doesnt happen….

  114. Matt, i sincerely hope you’re the ONLY google employee that is arrogant

    you don’t need to half heartedly apologize for your coworker, your company might apologize for its employees.

    and you do owe everybody who reads your arrogant blog an apology.

  115. have you viewed your page without javascript lately? the ads kind of annoy ya.

  116. Matt a think what you have done is spot on. Anyone complaining it’s from a play ground needs to grow a sense of humour! Named and shamed is the way forward. A little promo page is pretty insignificant in the grand scale of things compared to yahoo’s rip-offs too.

  117. I wonder what they’ll say about this in return..errr..we found that our research shows that Google Research found it more productive to have the colors similar.

  118. @ Cavaliero
    LOL.. True ..yahoo has wierd(read useless) search results..
    Anyway who’ll search for a hotel in PAK?? ๐Ÿ™‚

  119. mmmm. Nice to watch the fight.

  120. The IE from zip to 7, google, yahoo, word or texteditors all them baking in my eyes
    and no one is able to deliver designs or skins with a different concept! Matt in this blog use #F5F5DC as background colour and this is much better than that #FFFFFF of all the others. All companies invented the same ?design in that issue and them all are wrong I guess. Steel them all this idea from a nearly blind or from each other. I wrote this because two reasons:

    at first
    all the people that looked at my concept, only sees the light blue on black start page
    and not for instance SiteMap.html (light blue on grey)

    and second
    no one here react at my free idea , but in my stats I see many double favicons over the last hours!

    It seemed to me, that only ideas of the great competitors are so attractive that they had to steel from another, before they thinking about that they might be all at a wrong train.

    Or do YOU think that I am so off topic? Then please propose me a better place!

    Greetings Karl

  121. I like reading the difference in language used by Matt vs Jeremy.

    Jeremy says things like “WTF is that about?” and “Was some product marketing person so uninspired..”.

    Compared to Matts, “Not too long afterwards, Yahoo! changed their side ads to pastel boxes” and “Yup, getting copied without credit can suck.”.

  122. the zawodny.com article you link to in the beginning of your rant, is about google copying yahoo, yet your entire crit about either company is about how yahoo is copying google. so which is it??

  123. That’s pretty funny.

  124. Just because Google has been copied (many times by many sites) it doesn’t mean Google can do it without people making hay with it. When you’re number one (by a large margin) you’re subjected (like it or not) to a different standard.

  125. I don’t know why Google is even promoting IE7. The thing just sucks.

  126. argh…the tone of your blog sets my teeth on edge…deleting you from my subscriptions

  127. Mike Abundo, maybe some kind of partnership with ms?

  128. Karl: Matt’s blog skin is actually a standard WordPress template. There are other sites out there that use it too.

    I don’t remember what it’s called, but Matt wasn’t the one that came up with the template/scheme. He probably knows, though.

  129. Matt, I’ll admit I am probably one of the least likely people to ever stick up for Google or any of it’s employees (the Google issues I’ve helped build and incubate are probably proof enough), but I have always considered you personally to be above the fray – someone I could have a drink with. I’ve always envisioned you to be more of a technology purist who happened to work for a company I personally believe does not deserve him. While I may work against your company in a lot of ways, to find ways to defeat/subvert it’s technology, I have always felt that we were probably more similar than different.

    That said, I was honestly very surprised to hear your reaction. I guess you aren’t above the fray after all. This issue played perfectly into Yahoo’s hands (which initially I thought was great, before reading your response) but then you too got emotionally involved and made yourself look terrible in the process. Guess I need to find another nemesis. You’re just one of them now.

  130. HI!

    THX Adam for the information. Because I fear you and other misunderstood me I will say it in another way.

    I want to congratulate WordPress and Matt to use this background coloured (free) scheme. In my ironic question above I asked why all (MS, Acrobat,Yahoo,Google and so on) used a clean white #FFFFFF eye-burning
    background and says that up to date they all are not able to give the users an option in their productucts, to choose a background like this (better a little bit darker; or best dark grey ground and light coloured letters).

    Did no one thought about it? At a page in a book reflects the white part the light and the black letters don’t reflect, so our eyes can regocnize them.

    A screen works complete different, the white part emitted light and the black letters don’t. In this case it would be better and easyer for our eyes when the letters would emit the light and the great part around don’t.

    Because that the emitted area are very much greater than the letters, our brain focussed at first at that part which emitted the light (like insects gravitates by light) and the comes the letters.

    Light and vision are my special subject but if you don’t believe ask a oculist. Then he would say to you, to look in a white lamp (screen) to identify the little black parts stress your eyes on the long term much more than in my proposal.

    I think it is only a matter of time, that empoyees with eye problems, which had to work often with such products as Word, Explorer, Reader, Editor and so on, will blame this as one reason for their problems. And this with all the legal possibilities that are makeble in the USA.

    Greetings Karl Heinz

  131. I think it would have been much better if you would have just compared Google ads and Yahoo ads in a separate posting with dates when which company did what. Then your posting would not like the posting of a small child that got caught cheating and then tries to “justify” that behavior by pointing out what the other one did. I know you are not really justifying, but the outside impression ….

    Christoph

  132. Hey all, several dozen comments up I said:
    “””
    โ€œItโ€™s a fairly lame response Matt. How much classier would it have been simply to acknowledge the mistake and move on?โ€

    Johan, blame it on a late-night reaction. I canโ€™t speak on Googleโ€™s behalf why the page was copied, but I do apologize. People expect Google to do better than that, I agree that we should.
    “””

  133. Matt, I think we should give you a break (brake). Here’s something I found on google image search just for you.

    http://www.brake-pros.com/support/BrakeProsMovie.gif

  134. Fascinating. It reminds me of Lexus when it first came on market. Their cars looked very much like Mercedes’s cars. Now that they have good market share, their cars are no longer copies of Mercedes.

  135. Personally, I think the post was spot on. The apology came first, then the slightly tongue in cheek observations. Good on yer, mate. But more to the point, I think that its highly likely (especially from the state of the HTML) that someone in the art department just tossed up a quick version of Yahoo’s page with the word Google on it and sent it around to folk, “Hey, should we do something like this?” It reaches the right (or wrong) person and they approve it and slap it out on the website.

    That would explain the image (just a mockup), the crap HTML, the fact that the site didn’t correctly identify people using OSX, all sorts of things. This looks like a half-assed piece of work that was released because someone thought it was done when it wasn’t. That might not be the case, of course, but I’ve worked in enough large companies to have seen it done plenty of times.

    Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

  136. Hi Matt,

    Thanks for getting back ๐Ÿ™‚ And we all have that late-night feeling sometimes. Point taken ๐Ÿ™‚ The whole thing is a storm in a teacup anyway but I appreciate the more considered response and I’m sure others do as well (if they can find it in the swamp of responses that is – I have a feeling a lot of people are reading the top three posts and then just wading in at this stage).

    I have to get back on to PhilC’s comments though. You’re making your point well Phil but my problem with Google is more with the perception of the company than the company itself. Obviously the company has done phenomenally well and I’m not for a moment arguing otherwise. What irritates me is the unfounded assumption that they are in some way different from every other company that ever existed.

    It’s hard to explain why precisely this annoys me but there is a widespread online attitude of almost complete subservience to Google where everything that they do is treated as if it is manna from heaven. Any form of objective analysis seems to go out the window where Google is involved. I’m not necessarily blaming the company itself for that – hell, it’s the sort of marketing/publicity most companies could only dream of – but what I am suggesting is that the emperor might not exactly be wearing a full three piece suit.

    I should probably add at some stage that I am actually an ex-googler. One who left after around a year because I found it an absolutely stultifying atmosphere to work in so I may be somewhat biased. On the other hand, I am probably considerably more informed about what Google is like internally than 90% of the other fanboy posters above.

    What moved me to respond to Matt’s original post was that it seemed to me indicative of a type of attitude that I constantly found while working for Google – hasty, arrogant and slightly presumptuous. Having said that, his later comment reminded me of another thing I found while working there – good people making mistakes under pressure and being big enough to respond to it. I met a lot of great folks there in fairness so I’m not trying to totally slam the organisation, just point out that it’s a company like any other.

    My overall point would be that Google is obviously a tremendously succesful company but that on its own does not automatically make it infallible, necessarily well-intentioned or automatically good at doing anything other than the two things (yes TWO – well maybe three if you count gMail but I’d have to ask, who’s really counting gMail these days?) things that Google genuinely do well i.e. search and adwords. All this talk about how OBVIOUSLY this couldn’t have been a fuck-up by Google because we all know that they have legions of fabulously shit-hot designers pumping out graphics all day long is fundamentally mis-guided. Google have legions of fabulously shit-hot computers and engineers pumping out search results and targetted ads all day long. And they do it brilliantly in fairness. I would put their visual design abilities waaaaaaaay below thousands of other companies though so to me it’s not surprising that someone in there panicked and ripped off something else.

    Anyhoo, in summary (getting back to Phil), my original point was that Google do a couple of things really well and are actually pretty dodgy in most of the other stuff they do. Now we can all sit around and debate this all day long but I’d suggest that it might benefit Google themselves if they remembered what they’re actually good at and maybe concentrated on making that better. Tone down the guff, turn up the quality.

    but, I do genuinely appreciate Matt’s follow-up and wish him all the best. Props to Phil as well ๐Ÿ™‚

    toodlepip,

    j

  137. Yahoo bought Overture, the company that invented PPC, so karma-wise, IMHO Google still owes Overture a tremendous credit.

  138. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

    Ahhhh, but can stupidity not be considered a subconscious form of malice? ๐Ÿ˜‰

  139. So what happened to the “Design by Beccary” on the footer of this wordpress theme? Jeesh.

    http://themes.beccary.com/

  140. Very good publicity for IE7, indeed. ๐Ÿ™‚

  141. Actually, Karl, I think I know intuitively what you mean. I’ve noticed that white backgrounds tend to create something of a burning sensation, so my trick is to try to incorporate light/pastel colours for backgrounds where appropriate for this reason. The burning sensation the white can create, especially on an LCD monitor at certain angles, is rather unique and slightly painful.

    I never knew there was any kind of medical theory or reasoning behind it, though.

    By the way, I did misinterpret you slightly at first. I read “Because I fear you” in a standalone context and I wondered what the hell I did to inspire terror in my fellow man. But that was my bad, not yours. ๐Ÿ˜€

  142. Hi!
    2 Adam and all others which will read this and I promise that this comment will be my last here at this case:

    the theorie is that the sensors in our eyes see light,
    if you look at this nearly all sensors (about 99% or so) announce much white light to your brain as a positve result, but in the rest 1% negative result (the sensors which are not active) are the information you want. To concentrate the eyes on this and thereby extrem contrast exhaust them in the long term.

    The awareness is to abate the high contrast (as you with the pastels) and avail larger (best bold) fonts. But the best case would be, if the bigger bold letters are lighted (sensors sees them active and announce them) and the background (dark grey for example) is unlighted and the most sensors are nearly inactive. Thereby the pupils have unnormal little diameters
    .
    I knew that most people prefer the old resolution but black (letters) on white sites; in books it comes from an old technical reason. This reason on screens does not exist and I think them all uses it farther, because it is so familar and they had never thought about it. The other reason I write above.

    Greetings Karl Heinz

  143. And didnt Yahoo and MSN copy Google Maps. And didnt they all come out with a clean page for search like Google? (although Yahoo and MSN dont make it the homepage).

    Plenty of copying to go around. Perhaps someone from Google thought it was a template they got from Microsoft. Or perhaps it was just some “n00b” they hired recently.

  144. This post wasn’t meant to be a serious case against Yahoo copying Google. Just highlighting the tired adage about not throwing stones if you live in a glass house, etc. By the way, I love Mr Cutts’ tongue-in-cheek attitude about this. ๐Ÿ™‚ Nice little comparison of what your company had done versus what yahoo had done in the past.

  145. Google copying something from Yahoo? I am shocked Matt! We all know Google’s team usually comes up with much more inspiring and creative results then Yahoo does. Can’t blame Yahoo for copying your ad formats though, they have become pretty standard over the web as they simply work & look pleasant. (I hate bright flashy ads.) At least you are open about the error and apologised – it is much better then pretending it never happened, which is what a lot of companies would do. Keep up the good work, and hope u guys never copy anything from Yahoo again. (There is a reason a lot of us never use Yahoo ๐Ÿ˜‰ )

  146. Hey !! I thought Google supported Firefox and Open source. Google is turning evil every second. I hate those who like M$. Can’t believe Google can do such a thing !! And, Matt, I guess you also have no answer. Do you ?

  147. After IE7 update one of Google tools doesn’t work – #G that showed number of site on resultes page
    is it temporary problem?

  148. Interesting that the screenshots showing the ads for IE7 were from a firefox browser. That should tell the microsoft folks something.

  149. What happened to “Imitation is the highest form of flattery?”

  150. I think the copying of it was not really a big deal. But it did give Jeremy Z. the opportunity to say something about it. Maybe try to avoid it next time. ๐Ÿ˜€

  151. Sreejith, What OS do you Use?., I think you must be using Linux ??

  152. Hm…

    http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008122.html ๐Ÿ™‚

    It is like WAR.

  153. I have been very impressed with your blog matt cutts, and like the google ads. I am going to start reading more into you since I downloaded arron wall seo book

  154. It would have been much more classy to just post a brief apology, then go into a history of how Yahoo! copied Google in various ways. True as it might be. Everyone knows Yahoo! copied Google’s advertising structure and layouts. In fact, this move only solidified the public’s understanding that it is Google that sets the search technology and PPC advertising trends. Google won a major victory, in that sense, as Yahoo! let Google set the standard. Why cry about that!

  155. Irony alert:

    ” In my personal opinion, it sucks when someone else copies a page layout without attribution. ”

    You mean like this WordPress theme you’re using? Without credit?

    http://beccary.com/goodies/wordpress-themes/

    grrrr.

  156. Isnโ€™t there a difference between copying ideas (pastel boxes for example) and copying actual content? The second example you provide is probably content, but itโ€™s nowhere close to the lazy theft that went on in the IE7 page.

  157. Great post Matt!
    Some good new features and options here!
    Cheers!

  158. I think google copied this page from yahoo.

  159. Now now, play nicely…

    Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as we all know, and I’m secretly pleased when someone copies my stuff – it means I can then tell everyone, who will read between the lines, “that was such a great idea, someone copied it!”

    Anyway, an interesting insight into the slings and arrows of the denizens of search!

    All the best,

    Rob Scott

  160. I don’t like companies that copy content.
    It is just not fair to the original site. But goggle doing this is abit of a suprise.

  161. I still like Firefox better =)

  162. So do I ๐Ÿ™‚ but well i occasionaly use ie7 also,looks cleaner even though it really isnt

  163. Everybody copying everybody else – magic!

  164. With the IE7 browser, there’s no need for most users to have the Google toolbar anymore. Most use it for searching – and ie7 has it’s own search bar. So why clog the browser with another toolbar? Howver look further and we see that the results served are not according the regional Google chosen. If I want google UK – how do I select it? Microsoft take me to their site to choose Google UK. But G!UK isn’t there – and the user has to jump through hoops to construct it. Then once selected, it doesn’t persist across browser sessions. This has a major implication if you’re outsisde the US – which most of us are. See http://www.turnerdow.com/seo-IE7-Search-Steal.htm if I’ve confused anyone.

  165. Just to add to the previous comment – I’ve downlaoded the supposedly ‘optimised for Google’ ie7 and exactly the same occurs. No one at Google seems to be aware of this alarming bug. In the UK (or Canada or Australia, etc..) searching google for something using the ie7 search (which people use far more than any added-in toolbar) shows US dominated results. For goodness sake – try it! But you have to be in the UK, Canada, etc… to see what I’m talking about. Selecting Google UK as the search provider is a) very very difficult and b) doesn’t persist across browser sessions. Microsoft skew the results by making it very difficult to select a regional Google and then ot allowing the results to pesist across sessions! Why doesn’t Google know anything about this?

    Selecting a regional Google to start with is almost impossible – who’s going to go to google.co.uk, search for ‘TEST’ then enter the resulting URL into the Microsoft search provider preference? But even if they do, it doesn’t keep working. Pleeeeease just tell me that you know about this, then I can stop blogging about it and get on with otger work while you fix it.

  166. July 19th – to compound the issue (maybe Google will now notice) – the latest update to my operating system overnight (the auto-update for XP) shows the search utility in the task bar – outside the US this search has little meaning – and it can’t be changed to use a regional GoogleBut the major issue is with the browser itself – people will use this utility because it’s always there – but won’t get Google regional results.

  167. I have to agree with PhilC on this one. It seems clear that, in the information/ internet age, itโ€™s going to become increasingly difficult to define โ€œownershipโ€ of anything, but particularly of design elements. While I donโ€™t disagree with some of your analysis of Yahoo and Google page elements, and in this case, since the two sites are aiming at the same clients and performing similar tasks thereโ€™s probably good reason for assuming some cross-pollination, I do think that the evolution that usually takes pace on the web is a cooperative undertaking. Consider the free-source movement, for instance, which focuses on pushing the limits of programming regardless of who actually takes the credit. Almost every page you come across these days will have borrowed a piece of code someone else invented, or an image taken from another page, or simply a set of structures. Even this page relies on work someone did before — thereโ€™d have been no internet growth and development otherwise.

  168. Hello, matt cutts
    I reached here for SEO purpose originally ,then I saw the “rel=nofollow”..
    But as you are one of the men who I respect the most , I think I should comment even without my URL crawled from your blog.
    In this post I just think Yahoo! Ads has copied Adsense’s color with no doubt,but you should show your sincerity when you apologize for something.

    However I’d still like to say:”Big G is the best!”

  169. I am a massive Firefox fan. I wonder if one day that the SE world will ever be standard in terms of no cross browser issues, as every new system seems to bring more problems. I run a marketing agency and one of our success areas is email marketing. Microsoft bring out Outlook 2007 and that caused a whole lot of new problems. There are a few comments above that seem to lean toward the fact that Google copies everything….I tend to agree, I see a lot of innovation from other engines, then hey presto, Google appears with a souped up version….oh well, dont re-invent the wheel eh?

  170. I agree. Most of the time some SEs take advantage of their being at the top. This fact seems like a warranty that they can copy and give a brand name to things, anyway, no one will ever report them since theyโ€™re number one. This sounds discriminating and really unfair.

  171. There’s an uncanny similarity.. but it’s supposed to be contextual links right? How many different versions can you churn out?

  172. Yes, I agree Firefox is unmatched. Safari for Windows is pretty good as well, although I have noticed some issues with some websites. Alas.

  173. am a massive Firefox fan. I wonder if one day that the SE world will ever be standard in terms of no cross browser issues, as every new system seems to bring more problems. I run a marketing agency and one of our success areas is email marketing. Microsoft bring out Outlook 2007 and that caused a whole lot of new problems. There are a few comments above that seem to lean toward the fact that Google copies everythingโ€ฆ.I tend to agree, I see a lot of innovation from other engines, then hey presto, Google appears with a souped up versionโ€ฆ.oh well, dont re-invent the wheel eh?

  174. Firefox has never been able to give me what Opera promises to. Very easy to use, lightweight, fast. The only thing it is lagging behind is in compatibility, which isn’t their own fault. If even Google fails to recognise such a widely used and popular browser, it isn’t their fault.

    As for Safari on Windows, it is still in Beta. Very, very heavy. But nice eye candy. Can be achieved on Opera through skinning.

    Now I’ll stop being a fanboy :P.

  175. heh! I agree…very nicely put. IMO, Yahoo has always been following Google in whatever they did. Yahoo Chat and IM features are probably the only original Yahoo concepts (except Geocities, maybe…)

  176. trademark:
    I used to use firefox… but not I’m using Opera. IMO it’s better than Firefox (especially in transfer-site, you know what I mean?).

  177. Finding myself in the Google banned sinbin once again, I would love it if Yahoo was at least competing with or copying Google on Search, nevermind the other stuff โ€ฆ

  178. I haven’t change my IE to IE7 because I don’t use IE often.

  179. Wow! I thought everyone else in the World Wide Web has some sort of originality. So, what happened to the copycat? Is this punishable? Are we running out of resources that all we can do is copy?

  180. And where did Google get the idea for paid search from? Guess they copied that one too…

  181. I still prefer FF the best… IE always crashes and lacks all the hotkeys FF uses.

  182. I have recently switched from IE to Google Chrome. I prefer the look and the performance over IE.

  183. These are some great new features and options.

  184. I upgraded to IE7 but it still have some bugs even with the new IE8 that’s why I switched to Firefox and Chrome!

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