Was Google Busting on Bing?

Last week we wrote about a panel at the Structure 09 conference featuring technologists from the largest Internet sites, including Google’s Vijay Gill and Najam Ahmad from Microsoft. The Register also covered this panel in a story titled Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it, noting that Gill referenced several data points with the observation that ”If you Bing for it, you can find it.”

Gill, the Senior Manager of Engineering and Architecture at Google, has blogged a response titled Google Does Not Mock Bing.

“I wasn’t mocking Bing when I said ‘Bing for it, you can find it.’” Gill writes. “I meant that seriously, in the spirit of giving props to a competitor, and a good one at that. Najam and I have been friends since before Google had a business plan, and I have the greatest respect for him and for Microsoft as a company.” Gill goes on to compare the different infrastructure approaches for the Google and Bing search products.