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Politico...
Microsoft files
complaint against Google
By Tony Romm & Mike Zapler
3/31/11
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.
It’s a major escalation in the war between the two tech titans.
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 industrywide competition. 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.”
Smith offered a litany of examples of what he describes as Google’s
anticompetitive 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.
“We readily appreciate that Google should continue to have the freedom
to innovate. But it shouldn’t be permitted to pursue practices that
restrict others from innovating and offering competitive alternatives,”
Smith said. “That’s what it’s doing now. And that’s what we hope
European officials will assess and ultimately decide to stop.”
“We’re not surprised that Microsoft has done this, since one of their
subsidiaries was one of the original complainants,” Google officials
said in a statement. “For our part, we continue to discuss the case
with the European Commission and we’re happy to explain to anyone how
our business works.”
The complaint filed with European Union regulators, the first time
Microsoft has formally alleged antitrust violations by a competitor,
comes as Google is under increased scrutiny back home — from the
Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and among state
attorneys general.
Last week, a federal judge validated some of the claims of Google
antitrust critics by blocking the company’s plans to create a universal
digital library, partly because those plans would preclude competitors
from doing so. DOJ has spent months scrutinizing how Google’s $700
million purchase of travel software firm ITA would affect the online
travel market.
Texas last year launched a broader investigation into whether Google
manipulates its search results to hurt competitors.
On Wednesday, the FTC announced a settlement with Google over the
launch of the company’s Buzz social network. Under the settlement,
Google will have to submit to outside monitoring of its privacy
policies over the next two decades.
Now the fight intensifies in Europe, where regulators since late 2010
have eyed Google for potential threats to industry competition.
A number of small but notable players have weighed into that battle,
but Microsoft’s new filing is likely to add an even more heightened
level of intensity to the European Commission’s antitrust investigation
— the first of any sort targeting Google internationally.
Read the rest of the story at Politico
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