Has Google become evil?

The attack ads are back, but this time, instead of corporations attacking candidates, it’s corporation against corporation.

“Can you spot the ads in the Google shopping search results, it’s easy, they’re all ads,” says an ad.

Microsoft is accusing Google of breaking its famous promise to not to be evil by selling rankings on its Shopping page.

“Google sells their shopping results, they Scroogle you by defining relevance by how much they’re getting paid,” the ad continues.

They Scroogle you! We all know that search results come with ads on the side, but Microsoft alleges that on the Google Shopping page, every search result amounts to an ad because as Google admits, in fine print at the bottom of the page, “Google is compensated by these merchants. Payment is one of several factors used to rank these results.”

So for example, since Amazon didn’t pay, Google shopping results don’t include anything from Amazon.

“You may be missing out on the best prices and highest quality products.”

Microsoft, of course, wants you to use its search engine, BING, which clearly states on its shopping page “Payment is NOT a factor used to rank search results in Bing.”

And I tested it. You can type the word ‘Google’ into the Bing search box and get lots of results for the arch-enemy: Google phones, Google tablets.

Whereas if you Google ‘Bing’ on the shopping page, you get, Bing Crosby. However, if you Google ‘Microsoft’ on the shopping page, it immediately fills with Microsoft Office software. Which means that attack ad notwithstanding, even Microsoft has paid Google to be on its shopping page.