“Microsoft asked European regulators Thursday to go after Google on antitrust grounds, accusing the search giant of trying to ‘entrench its dominance’ on the Web,” Tony Romm and Mike Zapler report for Politico.
“Microsoft and other Google foes say Google’s powerful search engine and its move into other markets — from advertising to mobile phones to travel — has stunted industry-wide competition ,” Romm and Zapler report. “Google has described itself as under siege – the victim of a Microsoft-led ‘anti-Google industrial complex.'”
“In an early-morning blog post Thursday, Microsoft executive Brad Smith said the company’s European Commission filing accuses Google of having ‘engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers,'” Romm and Zapler report. “Smith offered a litany of examples of what he describes as Google’s anti-competitive practices — arguing, for instance, that Google has disadvantaged competitors in video search, promoted its search boxes through exclusivity deals and sought to leverage its size over competitors in the neophyte e-book market.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Forecast for Redmond: Scattered stones and shattered glass.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
The honor among thieves continues…
Pot calling the Kettle black syndrome.
Worse, Google specializes in searching. Microsoft, who does Bing on the side, feels threatened.
Microsoft is just whining it doesn’t seem to achieve world dominance in yet another area.
On the other hand, I am starting to have reservations about Google, not for its dominance, but because it starts to play evil, i.e., on security grounds. And Bing, sorry to say, is getting better.
I am happy with Bing… I switched as soon as I determined Google to be public enemy number one, and now, as I did years ago with Microsoft, all Google related products are off of my Macs and iOS devices (except for where they are a part of Apple Apps, like Safari, but I’m hoping that’ll change with iOS 5)
Bing is just fine, no better and no worse than Google, IMHO.
Sorry typo, meant Maps — not Safari
Some might think you are being ridiculously partisan.
But you aren’t. You’re actions are perfectly reasonable. I’m a very open-minded, reasonable guy, and I do the same thing.
Yeah, no kidding.
“Forecast for Redmond: Scattered stones and shattered glass.”
Hahahahahaha
It this not the pot calling the kettle black?
Microsoft, European Union , and Antitrust how history repeats itself in a different way.
It’s like hyenas turning on themselves to feed…
My age-old disdain for Microsoft has turned to pity, and I’m glad to see it throw its still considerable might into a battle with Google.
I feel so bad for Microsoft.
Microsoft executive Brad Smith: “This is the first time Microsoft Corporation has ever taken this step. More so than most, we recognize the importance of ensuring that competition laws remain balanced and that technology innovation moves forward.” OMG, what has happened in Redmond? MS now wants to ensure that competition laws remain balance and they are concerned about innovation? WOW
Well Microsoft would know more about monopoly abuse then just about anyone. They did hold back personal computing what 10, 15 years with their strangle hold on the industry?
The M$ dude wrote “Smith wrote that some people will point out the irony in the filing given Microsoft’s extensive legal battles in Europe concerning Web browsers and interoperability of its systems with competitor’s products.
“Having spent more than a decade wearing the shoe on the other foot with the European Commission, the filing of a formal antitrust complaint is not something we take lightly,” Smith wrote.”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! The unabashed “chutzpah” of these guys.
All I can say- what goes around, comes around. 🙂
It’s karma for Microsoft, yet their claims against Google are mostly valid. Google is using its clout to do for itself the same way MS did for itself in the ’90s. The difference, I think, is that MS knew they were flaunting anti-competitive rules and just said “screw it”, while Google thinks it is SO good and special that rules don’t apply to them.
The end result is basically the same: the big guy goes home with all the marbles. This decade the big guy is Google.
Yep, the same way MS did in the 90s. This is just professional jealousy, and a burning desire to relive the good ‘ole glory days.
Its a terrible thing to wake up, see the pot gut, and realize you have very few days left ahead, and lots of wasted opportunities left behind.
I guess MS can just buy a few companies to hep ease its post mid-life crisis
Hey MS. I want to introduce you to my sister Karma, she’s one big fat bitch.
Good luck. He, he, he………
“The difference, I think, is… Google thinks it is SO good and special that rules don’t apply to them.”
Another difference is, Google has the NSA and FBI looking over their shoulder and that bothers Microsoft because Google’s operation is receiving a passive endorsement from the government. Google has become a part of the proverbial “too big to fail” culture of data and finance.
Any business entity who is “all-in” for internet commerce is venturing in to uncharted Federal Trade Commission territory, something also foreign to Microsoft, who has dominated the desktop space for twenty-years, and isn’t losing ground because of its competitors, but because they’re out of their element.
By asking for an investigation, Microsoft will go to school on everything that is uncovered regarding the scope of Google’s position in the marketplace. But, more importantly, Microsoft is forcing the government’s hand to reevaluate their own best practices and policies, after which, if there are any amendments, or whole-sale changes to be made to Federal policy, Microsoft can be in on the ground floor to help rewrite them.
Microsoft’s lawyers know exactly what they’re asking for, and by asking, they are actually manipulating the government for their own ends.
DO NOT FEEL SORRY FOR MICROSOFT!
This lawsuit is a great idea. Microsoft will not stand idly by when the Googles plays unfairly.
Of course, you MAC sheep are too busy playing with your wannabe Zunes, Windows tablets and toy computers with that silly Windows 7 knock-off OS to notice all the “innovations” on your MAC gear that originated at Microsoft. Just buy the real thing instead of falling for MAC’s marketing and buying what your clueless smug lemming friends buy.
Microsoft believes in honest, healthy competition. Always has. They can hold their head up high knowing this, unlike MAC and the Googles.
Even Microsoft has proclaimed the Zune as dead!
Au contraire. There is a healthy aftermarket for Zunes – albeit, mostly in Zune Tang’s garage, but one nonetheless that will allow ZT’s flame to burn forever.
Nice try Zune, but you need a sarcasm drip.
Everyone knows Microsoft is the consummate poster child for Fair and Balanced and that monkey-boy act of Ballmer’s is just a ploy to draw our attention away from Microsoft’s brilliant strategy to become synonymous with the convulsion revolution. Aarrrrrrrgh!
Microsoft’s tireless determination to become the antithesis of flaccid standards and odious traits is to be commended. They have long since recognized that selfish and uncooperative behavior that permeates a company to the extent that all employees with whom the public has dealt, were treated with hostility and contempt are not the hallmarks of a respected role model. Can’t you feel a change in the air? Spooky, huh?
Their own Quality Control should be praised for being nonjudgemental and uncritical in a time when employees are being asked to do more with less, and are instead offering encouragement to those who try really, really hard. Employees at Microsoft are made to feel special, because they are!
Frankly, no one understands the legal system like Microsoft. They wrote the book on the deplorable ways companies might use their power and influence to undermine competition in the marketplace. Microsoft’s acute sense of fairness, coupled with its long historical perspective, would make even the most pedestrian among us proud.
Microsoft’s secret to success lies somewhere in the middle, between provincial and prosaic, and who can argue with the hundreds-of-millions of Microsoft consumers who have always shunned the uncomplicated and simple, for the Byzantine commodities that exude the complexities of real-world computing.
All you Mac lemmings can only imagine what it’s like to be controlled by such a powerful force of Nature. If we didn’t have Microsoft to keep us in check, who knows where we could end up!!
What you mere Mac mortals cannot comprehend is that computing is complex and impenetrable and if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, including MAC’S. So remember, the next time you see a PC user flailing at the keyboard, know that you are witness to someone very special.
Microsoft is your new mommy and daddy;
“Do as I say, not as I do.”
On June 7, 2010, during last year’s WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs announce that Bing had been added to Mobile Safari as a search option, joining Google and Yahoo! “Microsoft has done a real nice job on this,” Jobs said.
Without a dog in the search engine race, Apple can take the high ground and just include them all, without the need for you add each one’s app (which you can also easily do btw).
While Apple is currently in a rivalry with both Microsoft and Google, both of those companies do certain things well, and Apple allows the consumer to opt for those services if they want (M$ office is another example). Meanwhile, Apple is blazing new trails both in UI, hardware, customer service, profitability, partnerships (yeah, I read the article where HP thinks Apple stinks at developer partnerships MEH 😛 , but check out the incredible hardware partnerships Apple has made!).
Throw them the search engine bone. Let them fight over it!
Boo hoo hoo! Poor Microsoft can dish out the anti-competitive practices, but they sure can’t take them when they are directed at them. Damned hypocrites!
Enemy of my enemy….and so forth.
OH THE IRONY OF IT ALL!
@zunte tang – LOL !!!
(well done)
HAHAHAHAHA! Zunie you’re the best! You made my day, bless you 🙂
BTW we’re not MAC sheep, we’re iSheep (everything Apple).
I needed something to put a smile on my face today.
This was it!
BTW, does anyone know what color the MS pot is today ?
Perhaps Google’s motto should be “Don’t be evil… unless your screwing MSFT
mafiasoft is tasting the same poison they use to spread. It seems they don’t like the tasty when that went to their throat.
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