Microsoft Files EU Competition Complaint Against Google 205
bLanark writes "In an amazing about-turn, the bully has turned into the bullied. Microsoft, having been on the receiving end of many anti-competition lawsuits, has filed a complaint with the European Commission, saying that Google is using its market dominance to prevent Microsoft from gaining market share."
Boot, other foot (Score:4, Insightful)
No real surprise here. Exactly what happens in the school playground when somebody turns round and finally stands up to the class bully.
pwned (Score:5, Insightful)
Teeheehee. Methinks Google is actually using superior products to prevent Microsoft from gaining market share.
So they said ... (Score:5, Insightful)
is it
So is this MS's Chief of Strategy Craig Mundie's (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets deal with MS first eh. (Score:4, Insightful)
MS make a closed operating system and closed software for that closed operating system. How is that not anticompetitive? (I know this doesn't just apply to MS). It was even found as such in court, they where to be broken in two (a OS business and a software business), but then they got out of it!
MS bully the OEM to force Windows on us, and those of us free of them, end up paying more to not have it!
MS where given a monopoly by IBM from the get go and have maintained it with every trick in the book, and a few new ones they came up with themselves. Many of which come under "dirty trick". I could rant about MS and standards, but it's old ground everyone knows. Even the MS fan boys must be able to see Goolge are less bad by a order of magnitude or two, even through the MS cool aid vision. It Google do go properly evil, we can just change search engine, big deal. Many people aren't ready or able to change OS, in fact they are often deliberately locked in.
Re:Boot, other foot (Score:5, Insightful)
How ironical, TFA says "making it difficult for Microsoft's mobile phone software to show videos from YouTube".
This coming from the company who grew up on "embrace and extend" practices. Today the only reason why I have dual boot is because some websites that I must access will not work on any Linux browser.
Remind me again (Score:5, Insightful)
Which of Google's products don't have dozens of competitors right now?
Which of those products has a barrier to entry beyond writing and putting it on the web?
Which competitors have Google actively shut down? (This does not include being better or more popular.)
Did everyone forget that Yahoo was #1 in search not too long ago? That Google took the #1 spot with no advertising? That another company is free to do so if they can come up with a better product?
Google fails every test for a monopoly. I have no idea why people are continually calling for anti-trust investigations other than jealousy.
Re:So is this MS's Chief of Strategy Craig Mundie' (Score:5, Insightful)
new plan? Don't worry about tablets - we will just cry to governments that we are getting our lunch eaten?
Hey, worked for General Motors.
Re:Bing (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Microsoft figures it's up to Google to keep handing them everything Google has as a competitive advantage so Microsoft can have equal access to it. Some of the stuff is utterly absurd:
So, First, Google are mean because they have a popular site and haven't made it easy for competitors to use that content (YouTube).
Next, either Microsoft failed to implement something that worked with YouTube, or YouTube is actively trying to make it tough for a Windows Phone to display stuff. Let me guess, the phone only supports WMV files? ;-)
Not giving access to data owned by someone else -- I mean, wow, how dare you not let us access someone else's stuff because that gives you an advantage. Seriously? If this data is owned by book publishers, why does Google have to make it available to Microsoft?
My personal favorite .... I believe that they're whining about the terms of service for the data. So, they want Google to collect it, and then let Microsoft combine that with other data they have, and then use it on their own web sites so they can compete with Google. WTF does Google gain by collecting data for its competitors?
I'm not sure I follow the last one about competing search boxes. I mean, if you're using Google ads, I can see they want you to be using a Google search ... they don't want to sell you advertising clicks, and then have any searches you do get sent somewhere else. Just because Microsoft was forced to allow different search engines and browsers from within their OS doesn't mean that I want to see every web site allowing me to pick the search engine to use.
I don't see this as any legitimate complaint about antitrust behavior. Microsoft has lost the ability to compete in some areas, and they mostly seem to be whining that someone should force Google to make the same data available to Microsoft, which makes no sense.
This reminds me of "energy retailers" we have here ... some genius decided that the power company was a monopoly, and opened it up for a bunch of little companies to essentially re-sell the same stuff as the power company and called it competition. All it really did was to create a bunch of shady companies whose only goal is to convince you to "switch" energy companies and sign up with them for a contract duration. They show up at your door saying they're the "energy company" and try to get you to sign on the dotted line at "locked in rates". (I had to throw one out of my house because he lied to my wife and said he was from our energy company, and we needed to replace the piping for our furnace and get a new hot-water heater.)
There's no actual new competition, and in many ways the consumer is actually harmed by this because the companies can be a bit dubious. But, we get the illusion of a somewhat open market, which makes certain people happy. I fail to understand why letting the parasites sell the product of another company under the guise of "competition" does anything other than create middle-men since these companies don't do anything related to power except to re-sell it.