Microsoft-funded group is starting to irk a lot of people with its tactics

Mar 5, 2012 17:11 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft's efforts at smearing Google seem to be intensifying lately. Granted, Google is doing its best to help it, or at least that's what it looks like. The Redmond company hasn't ever liked Google very much and it's been firing away at the company for years in the best way it knows how, via its massive PR machine.

Of course, to maintain a modicum of integrity, Microsoft hasn't made too many accusations itself, but left it to "independent" groups, funded by Microsoft, to do the heavy lifting and the hard-to-prove accusations.

Lately, it's been less skittish about accusing Google of everything under the sun by itself. But it hasn't abandoned its "PR" efforts either. Whether all of this has been helpful to Microsoft, only the software giant knows.

But, even if Microsoft was right and everything it said was accurate, pointing fingers all the time hardly endears you with the general public. Especially when you have to rely on others to do your dirty work.

One of these PR efforts that seems to be backfiring against Microsoft in a big way has been carried out by ICOMP, or Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, a group that has a long history with Google.

It's funded almost entirely by Microsoft and was created to block Google's DoubleClick acquisition. That was back in 2007, it's been doing nothing else than badgering Google ever since.

Still, it's one of its latest efforts that are riling up people. Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Pirate Party, writes about an interesting experience attending a seminar on privacy, big data, profiling and online identities at the European Parliament.

It turned out that the seminar, organized by ICOMP, was hardly a general discussion on the topics at hand, rather the focus was entirely on Google.

"It was the most shameless bashing of a single company with hints and allegations that I had ever seen. In practically every sentence of the keynote, which was exclusively about how bad Google was as a company, words were snuck into the overall flow that were designed to plant ungrounded ideas in the audience’s mind," Falkvinge wrote.

"It went on and on. This was not a seminar on privacy at all. This was Microsoft-funded Google-smearing, plain and simple, and I felt my blood starting to boil," he said.

He ended up walking out of the seminar, followed by a Member of the European Parliament, supported by The Pirate Party.

This would be bad enough, but he wasn't the same one irked by the tactic. A recent article in The Economist tells a similar tale at a different seminar, also organized by ICOMP. While the tone is less scathing of Microsoft, the article underlines the disconnect between Microsoft presumed intent, to make Google look bad, and the results, it made itself look bad.