Microsoft says Google acts raise antitrust issues

Microsoft made its most vehement and public attack on Google on Friday, calling its rival's actions potentially anti-competitive, and urging victims to file complaints to regulators.

The broadside comes days after a Microsoft-owned business, along with two other small online companies, complained to European Union regulators about Google's operations there. Microsoft is also fighting a plan by Google to digitize millions of books, currently under scrutiny by the Department of Justice. "Our concerns relate only to Google practices that tend to lock in business partners and content -- like Google Books -- and exclude competitors, thereby undermining competition more broadly," wrote Dave Heiner, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, in a blog published on the company's website on Friday. "Ultimately the competition law agencies will have to decide whether or not Google's practices should be seen as illegal," he wrote.