Microsoft has taken its anti-Google stand in Europe to the next level by filing a formal complaint with the European Commission, accusing the search giant of foul play on the search market across the pond.
Now, before the “pot calling the kettle black” criticism ensues, it must be underlined that Microsoft is only a part, and not the architect of European Commission’s investigation of Google’s practices on the European search market.
Brad Smith, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Microsoft Corporation pointed a finger at Google for what he called disconcerting practices, noting that as bad as they are in the US, they’re even worse in Europe.
“Our filing (…) focuses on a pattern of actions that Google has taken to entrench its dominance in the markets for online search and search advertising to the detriment of European consumers,” Smith stated.
Google is by far the dominant search engine in Europe with over 95% of the market, according to a variety of sources.
Microsoft alleges that the Mountain View rival is abusing its search monopoly in order to make it harder for rivals to index web content, to gain advertisers, to distribute search boxes, and to ultimately gain more users.
Smith reveals that a number of companies have approached Microsoft for support against Google in Europe over the past year.
This, in combination with Google’s abuses of its dominant position that the Redmond company suffered directly have catalyzed the first EC complaint filed by Microsoft.
Smith enumerated a number of ways in which Microsoft considers that Google is hindering competition, including:
“- in 2006 Google acquired YouTube—and since then it has put in place a growing number of technical measures to restrict competing search engines from properly accessing it for their search results.
- Google has refused to allow Microsoft’s new Windows Phones to access this YouTube metadata in the same way that Android phones and iPhones do.
- Google is seeking to block access to content owned by book publishers. This was underscored in federal court in New York last week, in the decision involving Google’s effort to obtain exclusive and unfettered access to the large volume of so-called “orphan books”—books for which no copyright holder can readily be found.
- Google contractually prohibits advertisers from using their data in an interoperable way with other search advertising platforms, such as Microsoft’s adCenter.
- Google contractually blocks leading Web sites in Europe from distributing competing search boxes.
- we share the concerns expressed by many others that Google discriminates against would-be competitors by making it more costly for them to attain prominent placement for their advertisements.”
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