Antitrust Cry From Microsoft (updated)

Microsoft, whose domination of the technology industry provoked a landmark federal antitrust case, is crying foul against Google and urging European Union antitrust officials to go after the search giant.

Microsoft plans to file a formal antitrust complaint on March 31 in Brussels against Google, its first against another company. Microsoft hopes that the action may prod officials in Europe to take action and that the evidence gathered may also lead officials in the United States to do the same. In Europe, Microsoft is joining a chorus of complaints, but until now they have come mainly from small Internet companies saying that Google’s search engine unfairly promotes its own products, like Google Product Search, a price comparison site, over rival offerings. The Internet and smartphones are the markets where energy, investment and soaring stock prices reside. Microsoft, still immensely wealthy, is pouring billions into these fast-growing fields, especially Internet search. Yet the champion of the PC era trails well behind Google. The litany of particulars in Microsoft’s complaint, the company’s lawyers say, includes claims of anticompetitive practices by Google in search, online advertising and smartphone software. But a central theme, Microsoft says, is that Google unfairly hinders the ability of search competitors — and Microsoft’s Bing is almost the only one left — from examining and indexing information that Google controls, like its big video service YouTube. Such restraints, Microsoft contends, undermine competition — and thus pose a threat to consumer choice and better prices for online advertisers.

Update:

Microsoft's Brad Smith writes in a blog post: "the spread by Google of new and disconcerting practices in the United States" has hardly been stemmed by Washington scrutiny, and he notes that is the case in Europe too. But many of the complaints he outlines in his lengthy post transcend geography.

Smith aired six points: Google's ownership of YouTube has disadvantaged Microsoft in the realm of video search; Google has prevented Microsoft phones from running YouTube properly; the Google Books settlement, recently nixed in court, has threatened to lock out competitors; Google's ad services have prohibited advertisers from porting collected user data elsewhere, such as to Microsoft's tools; Google has blocked competing search boxes in part through exclusivity deals; and Google "discriminates against would-be competitors by making it more costly for them to attain prominent placement for their advertisements."