WebProNews

As everybody in the Google and Microsoft camps has been Kai-Fu fighting, the logical thing to relay to you this morning was the report that Google anticipated a lawsuit and was prepared to pay Dr. Lee, lawsuit or not, work or not, for up to a year. But as I was searching for these court documents, I came across something very interesting. MSN and Google are delivering search results about the case with opposing messages. Hmmmmm.

If you've read the Dogpile report that search results across the major search engines only had a 1.1% overlap, then it is not surprising that results may vary. But this variation is somewhat suspect when you consider the players involved.

When the search terms "Dr. Lee court documents Google Microsoft" were entered into Google, the majority of results were emblazoned with the phrase "lawsuit is a charade" in large comforting letters, repeated again again again.

That's interesting, I thought. I wonder what MSN returns?

As I suspected, there was one link, in the middle, with the "charade" reference. The rest were to the tune of "Microsoft wins round against Google," and "Ex-Microsoft Exec Barred From Google Job."

Could this be a coincidence? Or is this brilliant PR algorithmic manipulation?

Next, I did what any fair researcher would do, I check Yahoo! for a control group. Yahoo! seemed fairly balanced on the matter and delivered the most current listings-including #3 result for WebProWorld discussion, thank you.

Here are the screen caps, submitted for your perusal. And just for efficiency, here's your link to WebProWorld for discussion.

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.