| Microsoft has filed a complaint with the European Commission as part of the Commission’s investigation into whether Google has breached European competition law. To make the story short, Microsoft is concerned that Google might be using some less than orthodox techniques to stop their competition from creating a solid alternative to their search engine. It turns out that Microsoft is only one of the many companies concerned about the fairness of the European search market. As indicated by the European Commission itself, 95% of the search market in Europe is dominated by Google, whereas in the United States around a quarter of Americans use Microsoft when it comes to their search needs, either through Bing or through the company’s partnership with Yahoo!. Microsoft points out that they’ve invested billions of dollars per year into Bing, which is regarded as one of the most innovative search engines, but they admit that they need a fair and competitive marketplace for their hard work to pay off. The Department of Justice has filed suit against Google twice, once for its unlawful attempt to tie up and set search advertising prices at Yahoo!, and the second time for trying to monopolize book content. However, this doesn’t seem to have stopped Google from its attempts to impede fair competition, and the situation is worse in Europe than in the US. Among Microsoft’s main concerns addressed in this filing is Google’s acquisition of YouTube and its restrictions that make it virtually impossible for competitive search engines to properly access YouTube for their search results. This places Bing and other search engines in an unequal position compared to Google and forces users to turn to Google. Due to Google’s intervention, YouTube does neither work properly on Microsoft’s new Windows Phone. The YouTube application on Windows Phones is therefore just a browser displaying YouTube’s mobile website, without the functionality that Google has enabled its Android phones, and even Apple’s iPhones with. Android phones and iPhones enable users to search for video categories, find favorites, see ratings, and so on. Microsoft has also created a high quality YouTube application for its Windows phone, but Google is refusing their permission to access YouTube in the way that other phones do.
Another issue Microsoft mentions is Google’s attempt to block access to content owned by book publishers. Google tried to obtain exclusive access to books that seem to have no copyright information, the so-called “orphan books”. However, the federal court rejected this plan and said: “Google’s ability to deny competitors the ability to search orphan books would further entrench Google’s market power in the online search market.” Another concern regards Google’s restrictive behavior when it comes to its advertisers’ own data. Advertisers are prohibited from using their data in an interoperable way with other search advertising platforms, such as Microsoft’s adCenter. These are only a few examples of the concerns raised by Brad Smith, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Microsoft Corporation. It remains to be seen who will win this fight for competitive fairness.
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