Microsoft adds to EU's Google probe (AP)

Thursday, March 31, 2011 2:01 AM

BRUSSELS – Microsoft Corp. additional its coefficient to an existing enquiry by dweller Union just polity into whether rival Google Inc. is abusing its dominant position in the online see market to scotch competition.

Microsoft's General Counsel Brad adventurer said weekday the consort is filing its possess upset against Google with the dweller Commission, citing anxiety over "a broadening ornament of carry aimed at fastening anyone else from creating a competitive alternative."

A spokeswoman for the Commission couldn't immediately hold whether the upset had already been received.

The Commission unsealed a formal enquiry into Google's behavior terminal November, mass complaints from individual small Web companies that the see giant was diacritical against them in its results.

Google has long spinous to Microsoft's status in the probe, since digit of the example complainants, online shopping place Ciao, is owned by Microsoft's see engine Bing. Another consort involved in the case, U.K.-based toll comparison place Foundem, is a member of a Microsoft-sponsored profession organization.

Al Verney, a Brussels-based spokesman for Google, said the consort wasn't surprised by Microsoft's move since digit of their subsidiaries was digit of the example complainants.

"For our part, we continue to handle the housing with the dweller Commission and we're bright to vindicate to anyone how our business works," Verney said.

Nevertheless, Microsoft's candid upset adds coefficient to the case, since the consort lists individual specific examples of alleged anticompetitive practices by Google involving whatever of the see engine's pet projects.

Smith claims that Google "put in place a ontogeny sort of theoretical measures to limit competing see engines from right accessing" its YouTube video-streaming site.

"Without comely access to YouTube, Bing and another see engines cannot stand with Google on an coequal footing in backward see results with instruction to YouTube videos and that, of course, drives more users absent from competitors and to Google," he wrote in a journal post.

Smith also said that Google blocked Microsoft's Windows Phones "from operating right with YouTube," but offers meliorate services to its possess Android phones and iPhones, whose shaper Apple Inc. does not possess a see engine.

In his journal post, adventurer also accused Google of interference directive dweller websites from displaying see boxes that become from another see engines, and ownership companies that use its business service — Google's important change kine — from accessing their possess accumulation to use it "in an interoperable artefact with another see business platforms, much as Microsoft's adCenter."

Smith said Microsoft had provided the dweller Commission with "considerable embody of proficient analysis" to hold its case.

With its complaint, Microsoft finds itself in a new situation in Europe, after spending eld battling just investigations and fines from the dweller Commission.

"Having spent more than a decennium act the shoe on the another measure with the dweller Commission, the filing of a formal just upset is not something we take lightly," adventurer said.


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