Microsoft Complains About Google's Monopoly Abuse

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Frustrated at the FTC's blessing of the Google/Doubleclick merger, Microsoft is complaining to the EU. Its latest filings detail how the merger would give Google a stranglehold on the advertising industry. While these complaints aren't new, the diagram [PDF] Microsoft created gives you an interesting look at the sort of competition Microsoft fears from Google."

Comments

Re:Well if anyone knows...

[Onan]

Wait Microsoft used to be cool? When was that?

Was it in 1976, when their only actual product (BASIC) was less well-known for its use than for Bill Gates's whining letter to the community scolding them for piracy?

Or was it in 1980, when they managed to dupe IBM into shipping machines with an OS they licensed in beta form, ported badly, and quietly acquired the rights to just before IBM made it popular?

Those events are my first knowledge of Microsoft, so maybe they had a few seconds of coolness somewhere even earlier than that. But if so, it was in a far more fetal stage than Google's current one.

Re:Whining.

[Marcion]

The definition of a monopoly is not having 100% of the market. It is having enough (e.g. 25%) to distort the market and unfairly control your supplies or customers, e.g. to make prices rather than to take them, to dictate your own proprietary standards rather than open standards and so on.