“Microsoft left little doubt Friday that it was one of the companies leading the charge against Google worldwide,” Tom Krazit reports for CNET.
“In a blog post entitled ‘Competition Authorities and Search,’ Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner said part of the motivation for Microsoft and Yahoo’s search deal was ‘we are concerned about Google business practices that tend to lock in publishers and advertisers and make it harder for Microsoft to gain search volume,'” Krazit reports. “The post comes at the end of a week in which European authorities asked Google to explain its search algorithms after complaints from competitors–one of which is owned by Microsoft.”
Krazit reports, “‘Microsoft would obviously be among the first to say that leading firms should not be punished for their success,’ Heiner wrote in one of Microsoft’s strongest public statements regarding Google to date. ‘Our concerns relate only to Google practices that tend to lock in business partners and content (like Google Books) and exclude competitors, thereby undermining competition more broadly.'”
Krazit reports, “It’s personal, too. ‘Novell, when current Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the helm, was never hesitant about complaining to regulators about Microsoft,’ Heiner wrote. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Schmidt are said to despise one another; according to court documents, Ballmer pledged to ‘f***ing kill Google’ after learning of Google’s plan to hire a key Microsoft engineer in 2005.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Better hang on, for the unmeasurable amount of hypocrisy generated by Microsoft complaining about a company locking-in people in order to stifle competition could easily be enough to rip a hole in the fabric of space and time.
Pot, meet Kettle.
I can’t decide whether to laugh, cry or vomit.
Microsoft built their entire business on a foundation of scamming, stealing, screwing their “partners” and making vaporware product announcements meant to starve and lock out their competitors. And so much more!
As MS slowly circles the drain, I fear we’ll hear more and more of this type of hypocritical claptrap spewing forth from Redmond as the circles get smaller and the spinning gets faster. Even Ballmer’s big fat ass isn’t wide enough to clog the drain.
Google may be aggressive, but Google isn’t evil. It seems as though they work with other companies fairly well and support standards.
Google has made the internet a much better place. Can the same be said for Microsoft in ANY arena they enter?
> crickets <
Vigorous competition between Google and Apple is healthy for both.
Thanks for that,
I really really needed a laugh….
Look up “chutzpah” – there’s a picture of Ballmer.
Just give Google a slap on the wrist – it was good enough for MS
Microsoft = hypocrite!
Instead of complainingand pretending that Microsoft had a competitive product, why don’t they just put some effort in making Bing better? Maybe they could figure out how to index sites faster, or just have a coverage of the Internet that is comparable to Google. Maybe a company that makes word processor and operating system software should not be in the Internet search business at all…
Maybe Microsoft is pissed because they can’t ‘cut off their air supply’ like they did with Netscape.
Easily the most ironic story if the millenium…
“Wow!!! I just saw a pig flying in my backyard!!!”
Ballmer regularly buzzes the houses of Mac fans in his private jet.
So essentially, MS lawyers were having their regularly scheduled Tuesday circle jerk and one of them got bored, called Balmy on the batphone* and said, “Hey, remember how you said you wanted to ‘f$¢king kill Eric Schmidt’?”
*It runs on psychotic chiropteran excrement vapor.
Look in the mirror Micro$loth.
Or should we use the term “Payback is a bitch,” in this case.
“Being able to buy a Mac” — Fantastic.
“Waiting for an iPad” — Anticipation.
“Seeing Ballmer complain about Google locking out competition” — Priceless!
@Cubert who said:
Look up “chutzpah” – there’s a picture of Ballmer.
I liked it better when you could type in “Uncle Fester” in a Google search box and Ballmer was the top hit. Doesn’t happen now.
when you are fundamentally unethical, fairness and irony are not in your vocabulary. in search microsoft has nothing to lose. in OS dominance, even they have to see the sunset approaching. that’s why they are making all these knee jerk forays into consumer electronics, search, etc.
take google down in search is the strategy. if you dig deep into how microsoft works, this should not be a surprise. they don’t compete by offering better products, they take the competition down.
google does not dominate search like microsoft dominates OS and browser use. google dominates making money from search. just like apple dominates making money from markets they do not dominate. they sell value, not volume.
at the end of the day, search relevance and ad relevance are what companies will pay for. google owes no one anything for what they created with hard work.
do i think the regulators will see it objectively? NO. but ethics and intelligence are not synonymous. i give it a 50/50 chance.
@ Cubert
Look up “hubris” — (see a great picture of the Ballmer.)
@ mackle
D’accord. And ‘legal’ ≠ ‘ethical’ ≠ ‘intelligent’. But I still give Google the edge (60/40), after all, M$ is a convicted serial monopoly abuser!
Seriously, if I was the judge I’d laugh at this one and then throw it out
First post!
Deal with it, bitches.
Hm… : “Look up “hubris” — (see a great picture of the Ballmer.)”
That photo always reminds me of an inflamed baboon ass presenting to prospective mates.
Maybe that’s how he got the dorm assignment?
Jobs is laughin his head off…
To loosely paraphrase the immortal words of Winston Churchill, for microsoft: this is the end of the beginning, now we move to the beginning of the end.
I was going to suggest that we put Ballmer in an empty room furnished with a chair and a slip-knot hanging above it.
Tell him that he’s won. Tell him he has ALL the money in the world. And, that there’s only one way for him to ensure that he’ll be the first man in Guinness Book to ever have ‘had’ ALL the money, before someone would inevitably surpass ‘his’ record.
Anyway…
Maybe Google could sue MS billions for libel, instead.
If there is a hell, it must be filled with Windows PCs, with all UI built by Flash.