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Microsoft's Role As Accuser In the Antitrust Suit Against Google
HughPickens.com writes Danny Hakim reports at the NYT that as European antitrust regulators formally accuse Google of abusing its dominance, Microsoft is relishing playing a behind-the-scenes role of scold instead of victim. Microsoft has founded or funded a cottage industry of splinter groups to go after Google. The most prominent, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, or Icomp, has waged a relentless public relations campaign promoting grievances against Google. It conducted a study that suggested changes made by Google to appease regulators were largely window dressing. "Microsoft is doing its best to create problems for Google," says Manfred Weber, the chairman of the European People's Party, the center-right party that is the largest voting bloc in the European Parliament. "It's interesting. Ten years ago Microsoft was a big and strong company. Now they are the underdog."
According to Hakim, Microsoft and Google are the Cain and Abel of American technology, locked in the kind of struggle that often takes place when a new giant threatens an older one. Microsoft was frustrated after American regulators at the Federal Trade Commission didn't act on a similar antitrust investigation against Google in 2013, calling it a "missed opportunity." It has taken the fight to the state level, along with a number of other opponents of Google. Microsoft alleges that Google's anti-competitive practices include stopping Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube; blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube; blocking access to content owned by book publishers; and limiting the flow of ad campaign information back to advertisers, making it more expensive to run ads with rivals. "Over the past year, a growing number of advertisers, publishers, and consumers have expressed to us their concerns about the search market in Europe," says Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel. "They've urged us to share our knowledge of the search market with competition officials."
According to Hakim, Microsoft and Google are the Cain and Abel of American technology, locked in the kind of struggle that often takes place when a new giant threatens an older one. Microsoft was frustrated after American regulators at the Federal Trade Commission didn't act on a similar antitrust investigation against Google in 2013, calling it a "missed opportunity." It has taken the fight to the state level, along with a number of other opponents of Google. Microsoft alleges that Google's anti-competitive practices include stopping Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube; blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube; blocking access to content owned by book publishers; and limiting the flow of ad campaign information back to advertisers, making it more expensive to run ads with rivals. "Over the past year, a growing number of advertisers, publishers, and consumers have expressed to us their concerns about the search market in Europe," says Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel. "They've urged us to share our knowledge of the search market with competition officials."
Remember who was behind SCO on its patent claim against Linux?
M$
Do you know that M$ still has patent claims on Linux and Android?
Do you know that Samsung had to pay M$ to use Android on their smartphone?
Do you know that because of the so-called settlement in between M$ and Samsung on the Android patent thing, Samsung is obliged to use Microsoft's apps on its new smartphones?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"Microsoft alleges that Google's anti-competitive practices include stopping Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube; blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube; blocking access to content owned by book publishers; and limiting the flow of ad campaign information back to advertisers, making it more expensive to run ads with rivals."
The kinds of actions that Microsoft has been doing for almost 3 decades and still does today. Yes, MS is an expert on dirty competition and using it's monopolistic position to squash any sort of competition. I can't really defend Google but I have to say I'm absolutely flabbergasted at the nerve MS has to accuse Google of anything. It's like Charles Manson accusing Aaron Hernandez of murder. The Gall.
Comments+metadata indexing was the actual substance of Microsofts early complaint, the PR headline read "Google blocks Microsoft from indexing youtube [properly]" and lazy journalists just dropped the "properly" part. The robots.txt matches the actual real claim there in regard to comments.
The tags are on the page they just have to scrape them, Google do not have to provide an API to index those tags, thats Microsofts problem.
Their claim that Google should provide a Youtube API, is just nonsense. They do provide an API and its what the web browser operates.
Microsofts complaint happened just after Google changed its site and it broke Microsofts app. Big deal. Thats what search engines do, they scrape data and if you can't maintain an index then that's your problem.
Duckduckgo are Yandex, Yandex index the content without issue and update when a site changes.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828274/microsoft-claims-google-blocking-windows-phone-youtube-app
Microsofts claim here is just garbage filler. Which is presumably why they're trying to hide behind a bunch of small companies to gets a bit of "big guy vs little guy" sympathy.
How dare these Americans work hard and become successful.
Criminals also think of what they do as working hard - their "work" just happens to be illegal.
It must be hard to understand that if you do business in the EU, you obey the law or otherwise you're punished. European companies don't seem to understand it either, considering that e.g. Deutsche Bank and Société Générale were fined 1.7 billion. A certain car-tel (pardon the pun) also hasn't understood it because they're facing a 4.5 billion fine and it's as if the EU wanted to punish European truck makers exclusively (Daimler, Volvo, Volkswagen's MAN and Iveco) to the benefit of all non-European ones. Or could it perhaps be consistent law enforcement of laws which benefit the people who ultimately grant corporations the legal privileges under which they operate?
"Fact of the day: "Satan" is the Hebrew word for "accuser"."
Satan is Hebrew for "adversary," not accuser. I think you're mixing up Lucifers original role for God, which was basically going around poking and making sure people weren't just giving lip service to their face. The dude had a serious hardon for Jehovah, and hated pretenders -- it's part of where the whole "lightbringer" name came from. The whole story of Job in older interpretations is him acting in that capacity.
The whole Satan as the devil thing seems to have gotten really mixed up in later generations, amongst a gazillion other things, in the same way jihad is now becoming only seen as a holy war against infidels. At the same, your adversary could be any challenge you faced, even internally, the same with jihad -- your spiritual war with challenges of character or external forces. People would even (and are) named Jihad, in the same way westerners might name a child Hope or Peace.
As a side note: I'm always amazed some of Google's adsense stuff doesn't get more press response. I turned my head on them when people were losing accounts because they used adsense on their sites, and tried out bing on a few pages, which you aren't allowed to do in order to see what works best.