Role reversal: Microsoft throws weight behind EU's Google probe

[Rage for Order]

Remember back a little over 10 years ago when the EU was investigating Microsoft over anti-trust issues? It seemed that virtually every tech company around lined up behind the EU in their probe of MS. It's interesting to see how things can change in the course of a decade.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Microsoft-throws-weight-apf-1337664829.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=6&asset=&ccode=

Microsoft accuses Google of using dominance to thwart competition, adding to EU probe

Microsoft's General Counsel Brad Smith said the company is filing its own complaint against Google with the European Commission, citing concern over "a broadening pattern of conduct aimed at stopping anyone else from creating a competitive alternative." The Commission opened a formal investigation into Google's behavior last November, following complaints from several smaller Web companies that the search giant was burying them in its results and engaging in other anticompetitive practices.

Google has long pointed to Microsoft's involvement in the probe, since one of the original complainants, online-shopping site Ciao, is owned by Microsoft's search engine Bing. Another company involved in the case, U.K.-based price-comparison site Foundem, is a member of a Microsoft-sponsored technology trade organization.

Smith claims that Google "put in place a growing number of technical measures to restrict competing search engines from properly accessing" its YouTube video-streaming site. "Without proper access to YouTube, Bing and other search engines cannot stand with Google on an equal footing in returning search results with links to YouTube videos and that, of course, drives more users away from competitors and to Google," he wrote in a blog post.

Smith also said that Google blocked Microsoft's Windows Phones "from operating properly with YouTube," but offers better services to its own Android phones and iPhones, whose producer Apple Inc. does not own a search engine.



More at the link

[Duer 157099]

1. But Google is my friend!

That's what everyone says right?

(but seriously, Google really *is* my friend)

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

2. Google can't help it that they make Microsoft's products look so shoddy.

Who were they trying to kid with that Bing crap?