The EU is investigating whether Google acted unfairly towards competition

Mar 7, 2013 13:11 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is doubling down on its misleading Scroogled campaign and is taking shots at Google any time it can. Google doesn't fight back, at least not in the same way.

It's unclear how much damage Microsoft is doing, apart from the one to its marketing budget, but we know for sure how much damage Google's responses do.

The European Commission has announced that it's fining Microsoft $731 million (€561 million) over its failure to implement the browser ballot feature as it agreed to a few years back in the famous monopoly battle in Europe.

The ridiculousness of how Microsoft could "forget" to include the browser ballot, which was supposed to offer users a choice in the browser they used when first installing Windows, for over a year is behind us, but there's one interesting bit of data coming out, Google "helped" Microsoft get the fine.

Opera and Google were the ones behind the complaint about Microsoft not respecting its legal promises.

Granted, Microsoft would have gotten caught without Google's help eventually, but it must have been great for Google to get some payback for all the smear campaigns Microsoft has been mounting in the past few years.

The move may turn against Google though, the company is also involved in an antitrust investigation in Europe.

The European Commission's competition regulators are now looking into whether Google abused its position in the search market to unfairly hurt its competitors.

At the very least, the EC will now make sure that whatever sanctions it punishes Google with, if any, will be enforced.

It may also be more unforgiving than it would have been, to make sure that its decisions are taken seriously in the future. While the fine hurts Microsoft in the short run, it may end up hurting Google even more in the long run.