After Foley asked them what the frak that meant, a Microsoft flack translated this into "We do not copy Google's results."

But wait, there's more. Bing veep Harry Shum then weighed in with , accusing Google of a "spy novelesque stunt" but appearing to admit that, yes, Bing does use Google search results to improve its algorithms, along with 999 other things:

We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users.

To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today's story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we'll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn't accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.

If I'm reading that correctly, Microsoft is saying that being caught stealing from competitors is a backhanded compliment. Also, this just in: Shoplifting is a backhanded compliment to retailers, and a cat burglar breaking into your home is just his way of saying he really likes your stuff.