Google Fixes Yahoo-Copied Splash Page

At 5:06 pm this evening we wrote that Google had apparently stolen the content and the look of a Yahoo page promoting IE7, even showing the Yahoo toolbar with the Yahoo logo blurred out. Six hours later, Google has replaced the site in question with an entirely new one. This one thankfully shows the Google Toolbar prominently installed.

I can only imagine the email strings being fired around Google HQ this evening. New site is below. Robert Scoble, who has lots of experience with PR headaches of this kind while working for Microsoft, gives some advice to Google.

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/60138256/

This to me seems like an admission of guilt

Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo!?

I'm not sure if this is stupidity, laziness, or a mix of both, but check this out.

Back when IE7 launched, Yahoo! created a customized version and began to market it

to our existing IE users. The "splash page" looked like this:

Today it seems that Google has similar intentions. So similar, that they decided to basically copy our page and slightly Googlify it. If you look, the design, layout, and most of the text are the same!

WTF is that about?

Was some product marketing person so uninspired that he or she decided it was "good enough" to just copy us?

Seriously, click those images and look at the full-sized versions. They're remarkably similar. And I've checked with our PR group to make sure that this was just a template that Microsoft gave to all partners. It's not.

Yikes. Even the toolbar in the Google version of the picture has bits of Yahoo still in it.

Source: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008122.html

Can this really be true, If it is shame on google :(

Edit: well I did more digging and this is the original image from the google site found at http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie7/getie7.gif

Now check out the zoomed in version of that image

Still not convinced look at this

Now all we need to check is that yahoos site came fist.

Yup a very sad day for google