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Microsoft Files EU Competition Complaint Against Google
bLanark writes "In an amazing about-turn, the bully has turned into the bullied. Microsoft, having been on the receiving end of many anti-competition lawsuits, has filed a complaint with the European Commission, saying that Google is using its market dominance to prevent Microsoft from gaining market share."
No real surprise here. Exactly what happens in the school playground when somebody turns round and finally stands up to the class bully.
Microsoft is butthurt & quickly becoming irrelevant, news @ 11.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Teeheehee. Methinks Google is actually using superior products to prevent Microsoft from gaining market share.
which is totally what she said
Just a bunch of bullies endlessly fighting for world dominance. Nothing to see here, business as usual (literally).
How can MS claim Google prevents MS from gaining market share when Bing is using Google search results?
Without Google, Bing would have even less market share.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yes, I'm sure they can and will continually tweak the system but it's, well, pretty damn good. What this means is that barring some huge and amazing shift in computing, the best Bing can do is match Google, and in that case, what would be the point in switching?
"We tried everything, we pushed our search with our browser, we pushed our browser with our os (which you foiled btw - ballot box), we tried sniffing the best result from google for a query from the users of our browser, but we still failed. Please help us"
....
is it
Read radical news here
Specifically, the complaint charges that Google hurts competition by "walling off" content on its YouTube site, so other search engines can't display accurate results;
First time I've heard of this. Evidence please?
[...] by making it difficult for Microsoft's mobile phone software to show videos from YouTube;
Evidence?
by blocking access to content owned by book publishers which Google has copied and stored;
I bet the book publishers have something to do with that.
by not allowing advertisers to use their own data about customers garnered from Google on other sites, such as those owned by Microsoft;
Because private data ought to be public?
by blocking websites from using competing "search boxes";
Really?
and by making it expensive for potential competitors to Google to advertise online.
News to me.
new plan? Don't worry about tablets - we will just cry to governments that we are getting our lunch eaten?
Karma is a bitch that slaps you violently - IN YOUR FACE.
I tried to find some evidence to back up Microsoft claims regarding this matter using Bing, but sadly no results were available.
Oddly enough, google yields something when same term is entered.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
"using its market dominance to prevent Microsoft from gaining market share"?
Isn't that a tautology?
"They are using their popularity to remain popular"?
Except here it's a case of Hitler complaining about annexations and racial discrimination.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If only MS had files such a complaint during the GWB presidency. Given his DOJ's hard-on for letting convicted monopolists off Scott-free (Microsoft), I'm sure Dubya would have leaned on the EU on Google's behalf. After all, completely unregulated markets are the epitome of efficiency and public good.
Google are no angels, but compared with MS they are.
MS make a closed operating system and closed software for that closed operating system. How is that not anticompetitive? (I know this doesn't just apply to MS). It was even found as such in court, they where to be broken in two (a OS business and a software business), but then they got out of it!
MS bully the OEM to force Windows on us, and those of us free of them, end up paying more to not have it!
MS where given a monopoly by IBM from the get go and have maintained it with every trick in the book, and a few new ones they came up with themselves. Many of which come under "dirty trick". I could rant about MS and standards, but it's old ground everyone knows. Even the MS fan boys must be able to see Goolge are less bad by a order of magnitude or two, even through the MS cool aid vision. It Google do go properly evil, we can just change search engine, big deal. Many people aren't ready or able to change OS, in fact they are often deliberately locked in.
This is how business works. Microsoft should be used to it. stop crying.
Bing is default search option bundled with Internet Explorer, which is default browser bundled with Windows. At work, almost everyone doesn't bother switching back when something have changed their search option. I make sure they have the option to run Firefox and Chrome, but even "free" cannot compete with bundled in the long run.
PC games are still mostly for Windows and with this, Microsoft would surely have their Windows monopoly well protected for a long while. Unless someone (EU) forces them to make the customer choose the search options at first run instead of providing a quick default setup with Bing.
Teasing the nobles, and rightfully so!
"Specifically, the complaint charges that Google hurts competition...by making it difficult for Microsoft's mobile phone software to show videos from YouTube; by blocking access to content owned by book publishers which Google has copied and stored; by not allowing advertisers to use their own data about customers garnered from Google on other sites, such as those owned by Microsoft; by blocking websites from using competing "search boxes"; and by making it expensive for potential competitors to Google to advertise online". Aha, so that's what's wrong with video on windows phones! Then why is it that mine works just the same on vimeo and youtube? How exactly can someone block a website from using competing search boxes? Expensive for competition... now that's a strange one. I bet all google customers are just begging google to raise their prices, but they don't budge. "No, I won't lower my prices; *you* raise yours!!!" That's all that competition is about. Ah, and all this book data you gathered and stored... don't forget to give me full access to this. We don't have the time and patience to do our own homework, ok?
Which of Google's products don't have dozens of competitors right now?
Which of those products has a barrier to entry beyond writing and putting it on the web?
Which competitors have Google actively shut down? (This does not include being better or more popular.)
Did everyone forget that Yahoo was #1 in search not too long ago? That Google took the #1 spot with no advertising? That another company is free to do so if they can come up with a better product?
Google fails every test for a monopoly. I have no idea why people are continually calling for anti-trust investigations other than jealousy.
This sentence no verb.
I believe this is a classic case of the economic term called rent seeking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
Can everyone say, "O Teh Irony"?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
the bully has turned into the bullied
Or the other way around if you see the filing of complaints as the bullying and the using of one's ability to win as a fair tool in trying to win.
new plan? Don't worry about tablets - we will just cry to governments that we are getting our lunch eaten?
Hey, worked for General Motors.
... your products not good enough to compete and gain marketshare when you can't use a monopoly to force people to use your products?
News at 11.
Except here it's a case of Hitler complaining about annexations and racial discrimination.
And just like that - we go from feeling sorry for Microsoft to feeling sorry for this posters.
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
--Google is actually using superior products to prevent Microsoft from gaining market share.
Google is *INNOVATING*. Let's get it right.
(They going to add a ham sandwich to Chrome next!)
That said, GM did well to not worry about tablets.
Rethinking email
I've seen a lot of knee jerk MS-is-evil stuff (this is Slashdot after all) but what are the actual facts of the case? Just because we don't like someone doesn't mean that they can't be right occasionally.
We're supposed to be geeks here - rational, logical, all that jazz. Let's base the arguments on the facts.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
"Microsoft .. has filed a complaint with the European Commission, saying that Google is using its market dominance to prevent Microsoft from gaining market share."
Translation: We can't beat Google in the marketplace lets go after them in the Courts ..
Since when did google ever do any bullying?
Oh, you mean Microsoft?
They're just bullying in a different way now.
Why not? Microsoft already got in trouble in Europe for doing the same thing. From some of the stuff I've read, they have a valid complaint (if true) that Google is doing exactly what Microsoft got busted for.
I'm still amazed at how many people worship Google and think they behave like angels.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
And that's how licensing works with copyrighted works. You ask for, and pay, for rights to the copyrighted works. They are only your rights. Otherwise I could complain of DelRay for getting exclusive rights to the books they publish and tell the courts to give me access to their printing rights too.
There is NOT ONE THING stopping Microsoft from going to publishers and asking for rights to out-of-print books. They'll have to pay and agree to a licensing agreement.
But, despite the INSINUATION (if you look at the old records of the complaints at the time, you'll notice they didn't say that Google had agreed to an EXCLUSIONARY contract, like, say, the regional importer gets for trademarked Levi jeans for example). The rights google got were for google, but there was NO exclusionary requirement.
Microsoft just want Google to have paid the time, effort and money for the licensing and then sponge off it.
He did. "Mein Kampf" is basically one long diatribe about how Jews were trying to destroy Germans, and how Germany's areas had been forcibly taken and annexed to other countries. The last part was actually true, which is part of how Hitler managed to get power.
All of which, BTW, makes an excellent answer to anyone who says "world is not fair, deal with it": the more unfair the world is, the easier it is for the next Hitler/Stalin/Mao to get into power and start World War 3. So go ahead, cut those unemployment benefits and social security, if you feel lucky. Well, do ya, punk?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Someone's got to make one.
Please?
Infuriate left and right
A friend of mine, working for German "youtube": myvideo.de complained, that youtube is keeping advertisement prices artificially low (remember Google complaining that youtube loses money?).
Tell me this is not anti-competitive.
First, in 2006 Google acquired YouTube—and since then it has put in place a growing number of technical measures to restrict competing search engines from properly accessing it for their search results. 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.
YouTube does have a robots file http://www.youtube.com/robots.txt which asks not to index some parts of the website. This should be allowed. I have a robots.txt file on my websites. If you send a spider loose on my servers and ignore it then I may -j DROP you. If you send a spider to my sites and disobey it then I'll also -j DROP you. If you visit the hidden-linked /spider-trap/ then PHP scripts will begin to die('gfy') from your IP. I think this should be allowed, and I am strongly against anyone who wants to dictate who and what I allow on my server.
If Microsoft just thinks YouTube's robots.txt is too restrictive then they can go fsck themselves.
Now, on the other hand, IF Google is serving different pages or denying pages based on Microsoft's spiders user-agent then that is something completely different. That's EVIL. EU and others should strike down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger if they are doing exactly what Microsoft was exposed doing to Opera on their Hotmail service a few years back (yes, they really did serve broken pages to Opera-users based on User-agent).
I would very much like to see Microsoft give out actual technical details on what they believe Google is doing that's so bad and unacceptable. Loose blah blah "google bad" text is not at all helpful, they should show us the technical details behind their claims. It's not that hard. Opera did this when Microsoft intentionally sent Opera-users broken pages when visiting Hotmail, it's actually quite easy to do.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
So go ahead, cut those unemployment benefits
Im not really clear on how not giving unemployment benefits has gone from being "how the world works (dont work, dont eat)" to "its unfair, i deserve this". The program has its good points, but when people start feeling entitled to it, perhaps its a clue that its gone overboard.
Google is not forcing computer manufacturers to require google search on every machine that they sell, like Microsoft used to do. I purchased several windows licenses for machines that I used for OS/'2 (that initially included a windows license that I paid for again).
To this day, I do not use Microsoft products unless I absolutely have to, because I don't like their business practices. I do use XP in VirtualBox on my Linux desktop so that I can use my Livescribe pen and use Epocrates on my Palm Treo, but if it weren't for those to things, I wouldn't use windows at all.
Microsoft has been doing what Microsoft got busted for for the last 15 years. (Is IE rendering engine removable yet? Didnt you just do a complete rewrite of windows? SURELY you addressed that complaint...)
Google behaves a heck of a lot better than MS; they actually make it easy to pick up your data and go somewhere else. Try that with hotmail-- have they enabled free-for-all pop / imap yet, or does that still come with a fee? Microsoft operates within a mentality of "lock things in and make it hard to leave". Theyre getting better due to pressure from the market, but Google has avoided lockin from the get-go.
So go ahead, cut those unemployment benefits and social security
... but when people start feeling entitled to it ...
The thing is we are entitled* to these specific benefits. It's not just a matter of morality or fairness, but that we've paid into these trusts our entire working lives and were forced to do so by the same law that ensures we have access to them in time of need.
* assuming we've lost our jobs properly, accumulated SS points and are of appropriate age/disability. And NOBODY is trying to remove these requirements.
1) When I see a wmv player released for linux and android
2) Internet Explorer for Linux (dont laugh)
3) A fully functional silverlight plug-in for linux that lets me play netflix
4) Windows update being browser neutral
5) Opensourcing DirectX
Entitled has a funny meaning. You mean you are entitled to the extent the rest of America still has the cash to pay for it. You might think that, as a trust fund, the U.S. gov. has been busy squirreling away your SS money in a giant mattress under the Treasury Building. What you fail to consider is that the U.S. gov. cannot hold surplus money for very long, it has to go out again. So the SS admin has been buying IOU's from the government which has been using them to pay for...uh...the rest of the government.
So while you are crying over your beer about spilt benefits, and how the world isn't fair, consider that you and your fellow Americans have no one else to blame but yourselves. You voted those idiots into office in part because they made promises they cannot keep.
If I had mod points right now you'd get one.
Caveat Utilitor
It's not just a matter of morality or fairness, but that we've paid into these trusts our entire working lives and were forced to do so by the same law that ensures we have access to them in time of need.
No you haven't, you've just been lied to. What really happened was that the trust "loaned" the money to the treasury, which immediately spent it. It's gone. There are no resources behind the trust. It has no gold, no stocks, no real estate. All you've got is a bunch of IOUs from a treasury with no money -- in other words, all you've got is future tax revenue. Which means that it isn't at all you who paid for your social security benefits, it's whoever pays the taxes tomorrow. What you paid for is all the extra stuff the Congresses you voted for bought because it could cheaply borrow so much extra money as a result of the huge government debt sink in the social security trust without ever considering it would have to be paid back.
Now you want people who weren't old enough to vote for those Congresses who spent the money you paid to now pay the debt that you claim you're owed. Do you understand the flaw in the logic? The unfairness?
In the past, MS was constantly harassed by competitors and governments, which added significantly to its cost in maintaining things like Windows versions without Windows Media Player and search engine choice dialogs. If competitors are doing things that are similar to what MS did in the past and got punished for, why wouldn't MS want to make sure they got punished too? Isn't it fair that if MS is subject to these costs, its competitors get also hit by then? Ultimately, it would be great if governments didn't micromanage the technology market and innovative companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft were allowed to create products that satisfy their customers without congressional hearings. But it isn't fair if only MS pays while everybody else does whatever they want.
All of them. IE was licensed from another company for a % of revenues. MS gave it away, company gets nil, folds.
Navigator from Netscape is their only product. MS gives IE away for free (how do they pay for the developers? Profits from other parts), NN starved of revenue closes the company.
There's two for you.
What is with all of the anti-Google as of late? I have not seen a single action taken by Google that could objectively be construed as malicious. The smear campaign against Google right now is really grasping at straws. Unfortunately, if straws are all that are given and Google doesn't try to defend itself against the smear, then all that people will see are straws and thus that is what they will believe has happened.
That said, GM did well to not worry about tablets.
Yeah, and look where that got them!
No, that IS what Google is doing. They went along to the publishing guild and asked for blanket permission to copy out of copyright books. For which they paid and gave sureties.
They aren't getting any rights to orphaned books. They're orphaned. If the copyright owner wants to ask for their rights to be respected, they can.
But, being orphaned works, either nobody owns the rights or so many people *think* they do, they'll have to agree who owns what first.
The just have been failing the illegal monopoly test.
He's also on Microsoft's Board of Directors, hence no Netflix for Linux.
The more I dig into the details of this, the more it seems to eerily parallel the case against Microsoft a decade or so ago.
So basically they're saying: "We can't do that? Okay, then no one else should be able to, either."
I don't think that's unreasonable, assuming you think the EU getting involved in these things was reasonable in the first place.
Are they claiming that Google is blocking them from using this?
http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/getting_started.html#data_api
They even have implementations you can download. I just downloaded and tested the Objective-C library they provide, and it did indeed let me do some of the things Microsoft said they were blocking.
Well, there was this guy, Karl Marx was his name. He realized that there are a lot more poor and weak people than rich and powerful people, and together these poor and weak are more powerful than the rich and powerful. He wrote a book about this, "Communist Manifesto" it was called, and some people took note and put theory to practice. At this point the rich and powerful got scared and decided it's better to give the poor and weak something to lose besides their chains before they realize they have the whole world to win if they just work together, and created social security systems to act as the "bread" part of "bread and circuses" (mass media is the "circus" part).
Mind you, in some countries a sort of balance was reached, where the weak and powerful worked together for common good. This was called a "welfare state", and it was a huge success (as cooperation between partners who can trust each other always is), until Reagonomics spawned in America and infected the whole Western world, at which point things started going to Hell.
I hope that the welfare state and the voluntary (truly voluntary, for threat of starvation doesn't force your obedience) cooperation and pride in one's work it embodies can eventually be resurrected, but right now, keeping the Western world from outright falling to the not-so-voluntary cooperation of China - which still is superior to the "everyone for themselves" model of Capitalism - is an immediate priority, for it is a prerequisite for such undoing of Reagan's dark legacy. And I guess the second step would be to get the libertarians behind welfare-statists, as a welfare state is the closest to the voluntary cooperation ideal humanity is likely to get as long as resources are still scarce.
The program is legally mandated, so as a matter of fact people are entitled to it. They are just as entitled to social security as you are entitled to protection of life and property. And, more importantly, you are no more entitled to protection of life and property as the weak and poor are entitled to social security.
There is only so far you can push people before they push back, and years of right-wing evil have pushed them pretty far. I, for one, will vote communists from now on, and if that doesn't help... we shall see.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I have NEVER voted for anyone who made it into office. I keep voting third (fourth, fifth, etc) party based on the candidates past actions, but yeah, I'm pretty sure they would have been corrupted by the corpratist system within a couple of months. This country is f*cked seven ways to Sunday. That being said, I'm not counting on ever getting any money back from social security. As long as it goes to keeping grandma off the street, that's okay by me.
Nathan's blog
You misread my meaning, but understandably and raise a good point about the plundering of the fund.
I meant the law requires that I be paid, not that it actually protects the money put into the fund. I know it's shocking but my mother and grandmother are still both receiving full social security benefits (with, one might say, "never a miscommunication"). As will I for a good number of years even if nothing is done to reduce benefits or increase the eligibility age and even should the economy not experience a full recovery.
Alarmists ignore two important facts when they suggest Social Security needs dire and immediate cuts*. First, that the United States will default on treasury bonds, those IOUs you suggested are worthless, unpayable "loans". If that happens, we'll have a much bigger problem than people not getting social security checks. Second, that the baby boomer-caused depletion of the fund is permanent, which it is not. That generation has started to collect and will generally follow a bell curve as their population ages and dies off (end of the boom was 1964, SS is projected as solvent at least until 2040, perhaps 2050, making the very last of the boomers 76, or just under current life expectancy) . The following retiring generation is far less populous and will allow the fund to stabilize. And all the while we're still collecting from the next generation. It's a temporary and manageable crisis, not the "pyramid scheme" politicians will lie to you about so that you get scared into supporting the privatized accounts which their donors desire.
As for the empty treasury please don't blame me. I didn't vote for Bush and his treasury-bankrupting wars and tax cuts, nor did I have a hand in his financial meltdown. I also didn't say I wouldn't share the burden to ensure Social Security survives to serve me- you did. I'm more than happy to discuss adjusting my tax rate upwards if it makes sense, and I've never said there's no such thing an an unreasonable benefit cut.
* if anything, Medicare and Medicaid are the programs which must be addressed, and reform of those, in one way or another, is happening currently; on the other side of the budget pie, defense spending is seeing unprecedented cuts as well.
You know, I always hate it when people call them Social Security "Benefits" and Unemployment "Benefits", as if it's free money for dumb/poor/broke people who don't deserve it. Those two programs are INSURANCE policies, that just happen to be government run. What would you say if Progressive or All-State just up and decided that they're too poor to pay you collision benefits after auto accidents anymore, but you still have to pay your premiums?
It's like you've been asleep for 10 years and didn't even bother to do five seconds of research.
I really was afraid that with all the serious things going on that we might have an Irony shortage. I think that the whole thing was one of two things: 1) Microsoft being a day late with their announcement and coming out on 3/31/11 instead of the following day 2) Microsoft making a move into a new Market by going directly for the Onion customer set.
First, that the United States will default on treasury bonds, those IOUs you suggested are worthless, unpayable "loans". If that happens, we'll have a much bigger problem than people not getting social security checks.
The problem isn't that they're going to default on the debt, the problem is what they'll have to do to avoid defaulting. It causes the opposite of what happened when the baby boomers were paying in: Instead of there being a huge debt sink to absorb borrowing, you have the social security trust dumping bonds on the market, which sucks money out of the general fund when they get redeemed and makes it very expensive to issue more bonds to cover the shortfall.
Congress would have to raise taxes while cutting spending just to break even. Which is a high-efficiency method for committing economic suicide.
Second, that the baby boomer-caused depletion of the fund is permanent, which it is not. That generation has started to collect and will generally follow a bell curve as their population ages and dies off (end of the boom was 1964, SS is projected as solvent at least until 2040, perhaps 2050, making the very last of the boomers 76, or just under current life expectancy) . The following retiring generation is far less populous and will allow the fund to stabilize.
The value of bonds in the fund is actually a red herring. There is no difference between the social security fund paying checks by redeeming bonds with the treasury which pays the bonds with money out of the general fund, and the social security trust running out of bonds so that the treasury has to pay the money out of the general fund. The real question is, where does the treasury get the money?
The problem, at the end of the day, is this: Add up the money you pay in social security tax and the money you pay in other taxes that go toward paying principle and interest on bonds redeemed by the social security trust in a given year. Call this the effective social security tax rate.
The effective tax rate is going up.
And it's worse than people think, because intuition is to count from zero and look at how many bonds they're redeeming, but that won't get you a fair picture of the year-over-year increase in the effective cost of social security. In past years they were buying bonds. If you want to compare today and tomorrow with yesterday you have to look at the number of bonds they're going to sell and add in the number of bonds that they're not buying anymore, and you get a very not small number.
It's a temporary and manageable crisis, not the "pyramid scheme" politicians will lie to you about so that you get scared into supporting the privatized accounts which their donors desire.
The Republicans are idiots. Privatized accounts would be a monstrous catastrophe. The social security trust would have to sell a truly epic number of bonds from the trust on the open market in order to get the money to buy the private securities. It would certainly be good for the stock market, but at the cost of inducing a bankruptcy of the federal government. That amount of dumping of bonds would cause the interest rate for new federal debt to explode. You think it's bad now when they're paying $400B in interest on the debt every year, see what happens when it's double that.
I'm more than happy to discuss adjusting my tax rate upwards if it makes sense, and I've never said there's no such thing an an unreasonable benefit cut.
Raising (presumably social security) taxes doesn't really fix it. It's just trading one tax for another. You have to find a way to make the ratio of total social security outlays to GDP go back to what it was before, even though there is now going to be a higher ratio of retirees to GDP.
I think this is good news ... in fact i would love to see Google dominating a part of the desktop market not only the web :D