Accept in the "original" [torsoraphy] search. Forget Bing having to compete with Google's "spell correction team;" Bing need only use Google [copy] as a high frequency signal on tailing queries.
That sounds like exactly what happened, and it's wrong.
Google is setting trends on tail terms due to its massive market share. Once the trend is set, Bing captures the trend by monitoring user's behavior and provides that to the other users. By reflecting user's behavior in its own index, Bing seems to replicate the Google's index structure which created that behavior. Had there been no Google, there would have been different trends and Bing would capture those instead.
It's not Bing's fault that Google is so influential, and certainly not a reason for them to stop dedcuing relevance frm user behavior. Just because Google creates trends, does not mean they own trends. The users own their own behavior and are free to share it.
This comment really gets to the meat of the issue here. Search is about discovering and then predicting user trends. Google in fact is creating user trends through its position in the market. Should Bing be locked out of the market because Google is currently in the dominant position?
If Bing is allowed to discover user trends then it will necessarily end up being a replica of Google's results in some cases. There's just no way around it.
That sounds like exactly what happened, and it's wrong.