Danny Hakim reports at the NYT that as European antitrust regulators formally accuse Google of abusing its dominance, Microsoft is relishing playing a behind-the-scenes role of scold instead of victim. Microsoft has founded or funded a cottage industry of splinter groups to go after Google. The most prominent, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, or Icomp, has waged a relentless public relations campaign promoting grievances against Google. It conducted a study that suggested changes made by Google to appease regulators were largely window dressing. “Microsoft is doing its best to create problems for Google,” says Manfred Weber, the chairman of the European People’s Party, the center-right party that is the largest voting bloc in the European Parliament. “It’s interesting. Ten years ago Microsoft was a big and strong company. Now they are the underdog.”
According to Hakim, Microsoft and Google are the Cain and Abel of American technology, locked in the kind of struggle that often takes place when a new giant threatens an older one. Microsoft was frustrated after American regulators at the Federal Trade Commission didn’t act on a similar antitrust investigation against Google in 2013, calling it a “missed opportunity.” It has taken the fight to the state level, along with a number of other opponents of Google. Microsoft alleges that Google's anti-competitive practices include stopping Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube; blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube; blocking access to content owned by book publishers; and limiting the flow of ad campaign information back to advertisers, making it more expensive to run ads with rivals. "Over the past year, a growing number of advertisers, publishers, and consumers have expressed to us their concerns about the search market in Europe," says Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel. "They've urged us to share our knowledge of the search market with competition officials."
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[...] might have been surprised when headlines began appearing last year suggesting that Google and its fellow tech giants were threatening everything from our economy to democracy itself. Lawmakers have accused Google of creating an automated advertising system so vast and subtle that hardly anyone noticed when Russian saboteurs co-opted it in the last election. Critics say Facebook exploits our addictive impulses and silos us in ideological echo chambers. Amazon's reach is blamed for spurring a retail meltdown; Apple's economic impact is so profound it can cause market-wide gyrations. These controversies point to the growing anxiety that a small number of technology companies are now such powerful entities that they can destroy entire industries or social norms with just a few lines of computer code. Those four companies, plus Microsoft, make up America's largest sources of aggregated news, advertising, online shopping, digital entertainment and the tools of business and communication. They're also among the world's most valuable firms, with combined annual revenues of more than half a trillion dollars.
In a rare display of bipartisanship, lawmakers from both political parties have started questioning how these tech giants grew so powerful so fast. Regulators in Missouri, Utah, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere have called for greater scrutiny of Google and others, citing antitrust concerns; some critics have suggested that our courts and legislatures need to go after tech firms in the same way the trustbusters broke up oil and railroad monopolies a century ago. But others say that Google and its cohort are guilty only of delighting customers. If these tech leviathans ever fail to satisfy us, their defenders argue, capitalism will punish them the same way it once brought down Yahoo, AOL and MySpace.
[...] There's a loose coalition of economists and legal theorists who call themselves the New Brandeis Movement (critics call them "antitrust hipsters"), who believe that today's tech giants pose threats as significant as Standard Oil a century ago. "All of the money spent online is going to just a few companies now," says [Gary Reback] (who disdains the New Brandeis label). "They don't need dynamite or Pinkertons to club their competitors anymore. They just need algorithms and data."
Related: Microsoft Relishes its Role as Accuser in Antitrust Suit Against Google
Google Faces Record 3 Billion Euro EU Antitrust Fine: Telegraph
Antitrust Suit Filed Against Google by Gab.Ai
India Fines Google $21.17 Million for Abusing Dominant Position
Google's Crackdown on "Annoying" and "Disruptive" Ads Begins
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:14AM
"It’s interesting. Ten years ago Microsoft was a big and strong company. Now they are the underdog."
wow - M$ sockpuppets here, too? im0 they aren't the underdog, they're just a company which needs to fade away.
a shame the new(er) generation(s) weren't schooled in M$ tactics and/or followed their EEE and other habits.
nope, they've grown up sucking xbox's balls and now it's cool for sockpuppets to publish stories about the
"new M$" or "stop using M$!" all these posts trying to help stop the water from filling the leaky boat.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:26AM
you're quoting Manfred Weber, the chairman of the European People’s Party, the center-right party that is the largest voting bloc in the European Parliament
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Friday April 17 2015, @05:45AM
Wasn't Microsoft the one who started all this crap anyway? [kickassgear.com] ( fifteen year old article, BTW )
Same with the pissfighting with Novell NetWare ( IPX/SPX ).
Remember "DOS ain't done till LOTUS won't run"?
Ummm... whats fair for the goose is fair for the gander? Looks like the ganders wised up when their gooses got cooked.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @01:55PM
> they're just a company which needs to fade away.
I don't want them to fade away, I just want them to fade enough that they end up facing lots of competition. I want google to do the same thing. An MS/Google duopoly is only marginally better than an MS monopoly. The more the market fractures, the stronger the case for open protocols. Right now we are going in the wrong direction with stuff like Google dumping XMPP.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:17AM
i was told it would only be a three hour tour
a three hour tour
then i was violated. sexually.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:50AM
One Microsoft Way
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:56AM
Hairyfeet strikes again! Take that, you SJW!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @06:07AM
i bet the professor did it - he always felt rather gay to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:28AM
If a company has to cheat (swindle, racket, etc) to be profitable there is something fundamentally wrong with it, the system it operates in and the people who let it be that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:31AM
It's how Microsoft succeeded from the start. Why are you surprised they're still doing it?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday April 17 2015, @12:13PM
Good, you explained the world in one sentence.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @06:54AM
And by "blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from operating properly with YouTube" they mean: Preventing us from accessing Youtube servers without permission, then not developing a Youtube app for Windows Phone just because we didn't want to pay for it.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday April 17 2015, @08:02AM
I guess Google could always pull up some "cease and desist" letters and say by blocking content to Microsoft systems, they were only following the Copyright letter of the Law...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Informative) by t-3 on Friday April 17 2015, @09:56AM
No, youtube doesn't work properly on Windows phones. If I go to youtube on my windows phone (yeah, I use one because it's awesome for txts, calls, and social and that's all I need a phone for other than music and they all suck at that), I'm lucky if I can search, because everything keeps moving around and flickering, then when I play a video it's unwatchable because of flickering and weird screen glitches, although the audio is usually ok.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @12:29PM
Did you try in a real browser?
Or is Google also blocking Firefox on Windows Phone?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday April 17 2015, @05:47PM
Oh, you mean it does the Exact Same Thing that my LG G2 does with embedded Youtube videos? Sounds more like crappy support from whoever produced the phone. Palemoon doesn't work either, but I think the Dolphin browser got it working. I uninstalled Dolphin though 'cause I didn't know enough about them and didn't trust them enough. Youtube works fine, if I use the Youtube app though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @12:54PM
So they think Microsoft will kill Google?