An Apology to Vijay Gill

I don’t know if Google’s Vijay Gill reads this blog. But a post of his just caught my attention, and I feel I owe him an apology.

A little over a month ago, I wrote a post entitled “Even Google Should Beware Of Hubris“. I stand by much of that post. But I specifically said:

And, just a few days ago, Google’s senior manager of engineering and architecture punctuated a panel discussion at the Structure 09 conference–where he was sharing a stage with a counterpart from Microsoft–with the punchline “If you Bing for it, you can find it.”

Apparently I shouldn’t believe everything I read in The Register. Vijay Gill, the manager quoted above, wrote a post on his blog that appeared shortly after The Register article (and after my post), entitled “Google Does Not Mock Bing“. Here’s the most relevant paragraph:

I wasn’t mocking Bing when I said “Bing for it, you can find it.” 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. The Microsoft approach has some good points, which work for their business plan. I was speaking of one particular approach, among several others, which can solve the same problem. There was no undercutting anything, there are two approaches and thats that.

Vijay, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry for taking so long to notice your clarifying post. I hope most of your fellow Googlers are as respectful of your competitors.