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26 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 1 (2013-2014)
A Randomized Experiment Assessing the Accuracy of Microsoft's Bing It on Challenge

handle is hein.journals/lyclr26 and id is 9 raw text is: A RANDOMIZED EXPERIMENT ASSESSING THE AccuRAcY OF MICROSOFT'S BING IT ON CHALLENGE Ian Ayres* Emad Atiq Sheng Li** Michelle Lu** Tom Maher & Christine Tsang*** Abstract: In advertisements associated with its Bing It On campaign, Microsoft claimed that people preferred Bing web search results nearly 2:1 over Google in blind comparison tests. We tested Microsoft's claims by way of a randomized experiment involving U.S.-based Amazon's. Mechanical Turk (MTurk) subjects and conducted on Microsoft's own www.bingiton.com website. We found that (i) a statistically- significant majority of participants preferred Google search results to Bing search results (53% to 41%); and (ii) participants were significantly less likely to prefer Bing results when randomly assigned to use popular search terms or self-selected search terms instead of the search terms Microsoft recommends test-takers employ on its website. Our findings suggest that some of the claims implicit in Microsoft's advertisements warrant legal scrutiny. The Bing It On Ad Campaign may be viewed as (falsely) implying that: (i) Microsoft's claims about consumer preferences for search engines were based on a generalizable study; (ii) the preferences of five million individuals who have taken the Bing It On Challenge online are either consistent with or the basis for Microsoft's claim that consumers prefer Bing * William K. Townsend Professor, Yale Law School. ian.ayres@yale.edu. Yale Law School, J.D. 2014. Yale Law School, J.D. 2013. 1

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