In Europe, Microsoft asked regulators to look into Google’s antitrust grounds. They are accusing Google of “trying to entrench its dominance on the web.” With Google moving into mobile, Google haters are claiming that this has halted competition.
According to Brad Smith, an executive with Microsoft, he stated that they are accusing Google of having “engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers.” This is the first time that Microsoft formally alleges antitrust violation from a competitor.
The suit continues on with ways that search engines compete against each other with indexing and providing quality results, increasing advertising and distribution. According to Smith, “Google maintains a 95 percent share of the European market” as well as manipulates the algorithm to prevent competing websites from ranking in search results.
This will be very interesting to watch as Microsoft as this is the first time they are looking at it from another perspective.
