INTERNET : MICROSOFT LODGES COMPLAINT AGAINST GOOGLE.

Another complaint has been lodged against Google, and by a big name in the business. Microsoft announced, on 31 March, that it, too, had lodged a complaint with the European Commission, which is completing an investigation into abuse of dominant position in online search engine services. Based on several complaints, the EU executive has been looking closely, since February 2010, into how the world's leading search engine promotes its own services at the expense of its competitors' in its results listings and into certain exclusivity clauses imposed on advertising partners.

Yet there is a ring of tit-for-tat in this complaint, because Google, with Opera and Mozilla, was at the origin of a DG Competition investigation in January 2008.

Brad Smith, vice-president of Microsoft, commented in a blog published on the group's website: "We have concerns about a growing number of practices aimed at preventing others from creating a competitive offer [ ] It blocks content and data its competitors need to furnish search results to consumers and to draw advertisers," the main source of earnings for free online services. Smith identifies the subject of the complaint: the online video site YouTube, bought by Google in 2006, to which mobile access is only possible through its own Android system or Apple's iOS (which is not in competition with it), but not to competitors such as Windows phone. Microsoft argues that this constitutes a barrier to competition.

ECOSYSTEM LOCKED UP

The Redmond-based firm also details its arguments meant to demonstrate that Google locks up its ecosystem and is privatising portions of the internet in flagrant breach of competition rules: access to data, online searches, online advertising and content (Google books).

The European leader in search engine services has replied that it is "not surprised," since the original complaint that triggered the Commission's investigation was "filed by a subsidiary" of Microsoft, Bing. It added that when the Commission opened its inquiry, in February 2010, Google had accused Microsoft of creating tension without reason, because it maintained good relations with one of the complainants, Ciao!, until this firm was taken over by Microsoft.

Google is developing a strategy different from Microsoft's at the time the Commission ruled against in it March 2004, preferring to work out a friendly settlement with the EU executive in line with the agreement concluded with the Federal Trade Commission in the United States, which had opened an investigation into privacy problems related to the launch of its service.

The Commission has taken note of the complaint and, in keeping with procedure, will inform Google and ask for its comments.