Legal News

Microsoft Sharpens Antitrust Attack Against Google

By Nathan Koppel

Microsoft has become consumed by drama of late, as co-founder Paul Allen is soon to release a memoir in which he promises to open a closet full of bitterness towards his former pal and business colleague Bill Gates.   (Here’s a Vanity Fair excerpt of the Allen tome and a page one story from WSJ story about the fractured relationship.)

As much as we love it when tech billionaires take off the gloves, we turn to the more sober topic of Microsoft’s role as an antitrust aggressor, a far cry from the days when the company was the one picked on by competition police.

Microsoft today filed a formal complaint with European antitrust authorities that targets Google’s dominance of the Internet search market. (Here’s a report from Bloomberg and here’s a New York Times piece about Microsoft’s antitrust campaign against Google.)

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel (pictured), explains the reasons why the company filed the complaint in this blog post, which cites a half-dozen instances of alleged anticompetitive behavior, including Google’s alleged efforts to block access to content owned by book publishers.

“Google has done much to advance its laudable mission to ‘organize the world's information,’" Smith writes, “but we're concerned by a broadening pattern of conduct aimed at stopping anyone else from creating a competitive alternative.”

Google has denied wrongdoing, and Bloomberg quoted a spokesman saying that the company is cooperating with European regulators and is “happy to explain to anyone how our business works.”

Michael Cusumano, a professor at MIT, told the Times that Microsoft’s new role as an antitrust heavy reflects how fortunes can change quickly in the tech world.  "The company that was the 800-pound gorilla is now resorting to antitrust, where it is always the case that the also-rans sue the winners," he said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 31, 2011 (boomark / email).