Google Supports E.U. Antitrust Case Against Microsoft
By Anna Johnson on March 2nd, 2009Google will apply to join a European Union antitrust case against Microsoft. The E.U. has initiated proceedings arguing that Microsoft has unlawfully tied its Internet Explorer website browser to its Windows operating system, thereby inhibiting browser competition in Europe.
The United States Department of Justice brought a similar case against Microsoft back in the 1990s. The E.U. recently initiated its case in response to a complaint by the Norwegian maker of competing browser Opera.
Opera has since been joined by Mozilla, maker of Firefox, and now Google, which launched its web browser, Chrome, last year.
Anyone else see the irony in all this?
The E.U.’s case comes at a time when Internet Explorer’s market share has slipped significantly. According to Net Applications, IE had 68 percent of the browser market in January 2009, down from 80 percent of the market two years ago.
Firefox has a 21.5 percent market share, while Apple’s Safari has 8.3 percent, and Google’s Chrome has about 1 percent.
Meanwhile, Google has itself raised the possibility of getting Chrome pre-installed on computers made by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
Then again, maybe the move is not all that surprising given Google’s previous antitrust skirmishes with Microsoft.
In 2006 Google complained to both the U.S. Justice Department and to European regulators that Microsoft was using IE to unfairly direct users to Microsoft’s search engine, at the expense of Google. The Justice Department essentially threw out that claim, determining that IE did not pose a threat to competition.
In another instance of the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ Google lobbied against Microsoft’s proposed, and ultimately failed, acquisition of Yahoo. Only a few months later Google and Yahoo entered into a search engine deal they later abandoned, arguably because the Department of Justice planned to block the deal due to antitrust considerations.
And, as you might expect, Microsoft lobbied against the Google-Yahoo deal, and also opposed Google’s acquisition of ad network, DoubleClick.
I just keep getting this vision of two big kids fighting over a sandpit, while all the other kids watch on, wondering if they’ll ever get a chance to play in the sandpit too…
Source: Miguel Helft, “Google Joins Europe Case Against Microsoft,” The New York Times, February 24, 2009
