Oh irony, thy silver thorn strikes like the moonlight through my delicate skin. While this complaint could actually hold merit, the fact it’s coming from Microsoft lessens its validity somewhat. Redmond has just filed an antitrust complaint about Google in Europe.
The European Commission is currently investigating Google for possible anticompetitive behaviour in Europe, and this complaint from Microsoft has been filed as part of said investigation. Microsoft lists some very specific examples of how Google makes it harder for competitors to enter the search business.
For instance, Microsoft claims that search engines other than Google’s own are blocked from properly getting access to all data regarding YouTube videos, obviously making it harder for competitors to deliver good search results in the video realm. In addition, Microsoft claims that Google is blocking Windows Phone 7 from getting the kind of access to YouTube metadata that both Android and iOS already enjoy.
“As a result, Microsoft’s YouTube ‘app’ on Windows Phones is basically just a browser displaying YouTube’s mobile Web site, without the rich functionality offered on competing phones,” Brad Smith, senior vice president & general counsel for Microsoft, detals, “Microsoft is ready to release a high quality YouTube app for Windows Phone. We just need permission to access YouTube in the way that other phones already do, permission Google has refused to provide.”
Smith further notes that apart from Android, iOS does get this kind of access – because Apple doesn’t offer a search alternative.
Furthermore, Microsoft claims that Google is preventing advertisers from accessing their own data, which harms Microsoft’s adCenter because said data can’t be used in an interoperable way with it.
“Google is even restricting its customers’ – namely, advertisers’ – access to their own data. Advertisers input large amounts of data into Google’s ad servers in the course of managing their advertising campaigns. This data belongs to the advertisers: it reflects their decisions about their own business. But Google contractually prohibits advertisers from using their data in an interoperable way with other search advertising platforms, such as Microsoft’s adCenter.”
Microsoft further mentions things like the Google Books deal, shenanigans with Google contractually prohibiting websites from using search engine boxes from competing search providers, and, of course, that Google supposedly blocks competitors from prominent ad placement.
“We readily appreciate that Google should continue to have the freedom to innovate,” Smith concludes, “But it shouldn’t be permitted to pursue practices that restrict others from innovating and offering competitive alternatives. That’s what it’s doing now. And that’s what we hope European officials will assess and ultimately decide to stop.”
The problem I have with this complaint is not that it is invalid – considering Google is a company like any other, they’ll most likely be engaging in nasty behaviour, just like any other large company, it’s in their genes. And, it’s great the European Commission is looking into such possible behaviour.
No, the real problem here is the irony. All the things Microsoft is accusing Google of have been pretty much perfected by Microsoft over the past two decades and then some. I wish that during the next press talk about this, someone has the bloody guts to stand up and say just one word.
BeOS.
Also, Brad, every time someone uses a double space after a full stop, God creates a Windows vulnerability. So, stop it.
The market is unfair, yes, so there is something to complain about it, but:
So, Google ‘innovates’ e.g. by adding some new feature in accessing Youtube from their Android phones.
Where is the ‘innovation’ that Microsoft want to brings in with simply dipping into Google data?
Google didn’t create YouTube, they purchased it. That’s not innovation.
Microsoft didn’t create PowerPoint, they purchased it in 1987 for $14 million. So you’re saying that none of the changes since that date were innovative?
I don’t recall saying that.
My question again is: where is Microsoft innovation?
You seem to have forgotten the only innovation MS has made – W.G.A (and also turning the computer industry into a McDonalds style world)
Personally I have seen more more innovation in the Linux world in the last decade (compiz came before Vista/7)
But not before Quartz.
Which of course came 3 years after Project Looking Glass.
Wrong. Quartz was officially introduced in 1999, Project Looking Glass is from 2003 or so. The hardware accelerated Quartz Extreme even predates PLG.
I’m not a big Microsoft fan, but there is at least one domain where they have been doing a lot of development : realtime 3D rendering (aka games) [1]. Of course, NVIDIA and ATI played their role in these developments, but it’s a team game.
Microsoft research also has a lot of interesting projects and is employing a lot of smart guys :
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/
Now, what’s funny is that they are complaining in the context of search and mobile phones… and yeah in these domains, I haven’t seen a lot of innovations from them =)
[1] http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/john-Carmack-DirectX-OpenGL-API-Doom,…
> http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/john-Carmack-DirectX-OpenGL-API-Doom,…
There they talk about the interview that made another site: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/03/11/carmack-directx-bett…
As it was already written in http://www.osnews.com/thread?467079 :
The article you’ve linked to [http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/03/11/carmack-directx-bett…] mixes up a family of API’s (Direct X) with a 3D only API (OpenGL). The journalist should have mentioned Direct3D when comparing to OpenGL. Carmack would never make such a mistake, hence the article probably has more journalistic interpretation / freedom in it than actually quoting Carmacks exact words. The proof is still in the pudding, since Carmack is still using OpenGL for idTech5 rendering engine, and not Direct3D. There was a period in 2006-2008 where OpenGL got intangled in a dispute amongst it’s members regarding the future direction of OpenGL. However, ever since they got their act together, OpenGL has been moving faster and adopting newer technologies more agressively than the Microsoft offering. There have been 3 more OpenGL spec releases in the last 18 months compared to Direct3D. Each spec matches hardware requirement (what’s the point of doing a release if it doesn’t target hardware support). Hence, OpenGL 4.1 supports more hardware features than Direct3D.
Disclaimer – I write 3D rendering engines professionally for a living.
You’re being unfair, WP7’s UI is very nice and refreshing, truly something which shows that Microsoft can learn from their past mistakes…
If only there was more to this OS than it!
Edited 2011-03-31 21:21 UTC
what antitrust is about..
if for example google controls 99% of the video distribution (note the if), then they are a monopoly on that.
If google applies special rules that forbid others to compete (can’t start competing service / can’t access google service the same way as they do etc) then antitrust applies.
When the service is NOT a monopoly, antitrust does not apply.
IANAL but this is a quick & dirty explanation
I clicked on the link – Access denied!
It is an HTML-mistake, the link is broken:
<a href= http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2011/03/…
The real link is:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2011/03/…
On the issue of the double space after a full stop: seems in the HTML on that page it says: non-breaking-space followed by a normal space.
That strange, I think it’s a conversion problem somewhere. I don’t think Brad did it.
Edited 2011-03-31 09:49 UTC
Everytime you call a double return, a double space, god kills an open source OS!
Sorry, sometimes you just _have_ to 😉
Sorry, just not possible to stop the double spaces. It’s in the dna now after being drilled into us in school. We wish we could stop, but a single space makes us feel dirty. Of course this site strips the second space and that is why I cry every time I ready a comment with more than one sentence. :'(
That’s why we need LyX-like input handling in things like browsers’ contentEditable support.
(LyX ignores space keypresses after the first. Browsers currently insert to circumvent their own whitespace normalization algorithms.)
Lyx used not to ignore a second keypress; it would complain at the bottom of the window, and tell the user to read the manual. In fact, I was so used to that annoying message that I pulled up Lyx just now to test it, and you’re right; now (v1.6.5) it seems to ignore me.
Of course, Lyx is merely mimicking TeX, the program it uses for… typesetting! The typesetting is extremely high quality; it was developed by Donald Knuth of Stanford University some decades ago, but is used routinely by publishers. And it’s all open source, from TeX to Lyx. It was the original open source success story, long before Mozilla.
That said, you can create double spaces after a period in Lyx, LaTeX, etc., but the default is the correct way, typographically speaking.
*nod* My point is that both TeX and browsers do the right thing but, while things like contentEditable just silently insert , LyX requires you to consciously decide to do things in a way that implies it might not be how you’re supposed to use it.
The browser UI second-guesses the rendering engine on that point while LyX doesn’t second-guess TeX.
I feel your pain. I’m glad that we put emphasis on important stuff like this in our schools. This will be my only post with a single space after periods.
Agreed!
I always end sentences with double-spaces unless I have character limitations.
The main advantage, to me, is to permit fragmentation of the written word into groups for speed-reading. As a quasi-speed-reader I always search to group the text into short thoughts broken apart by double-spaces or dashes.
Comma separation, such as this, can enable further grouping, but it is helpful to be able to group full sentences as well.
( I tend to read in reverse, however ).
–The loon
And however many spaces you place after a sentence has nothing do with grammar, and is only a preference of presentation. People who get worked up over it should get a life.
Thom:
Just a note. Looking Glass was written for Linux and was a true 3D desktop environment rather than 3D effects layered on a 2D desktop. The author worked for Sun at the time(2003) and did it as a personal project. So lets be honest about where the real innovation was happening.
NOTE:There may have been 3d desktops before this but I am not aware of any.
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=64327
edit:
There is also a youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOsQO_EMf-4&feature=player_embedded
Edited 2011-03-31 19:50 UTC
The issue here is antitrust; specifically, does Google have such a strangehold on Search in Europe — and it appears that they do — that it blocks competitors from competing? It isn’t good for a single entity to control an entire market — but it’s worse when that entity actively BLOCKS other competitors from even being able to compete. Regardless of whether you dislike Microsoft, it is better when there’s robust competition. Browser competition has produced better browsers — and even Microsoft responded by improving its own browser. We should expect no less from Search. Google has become very sleazy and heavy-handed. IMHO, it’s time they were reined in. We will all benefit.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2011033112355966
“Microsoft Gives Up, Says It Can’t Win: Files an Antitrust Complaint Against Google”
Interesting.
That’s one (slanted) interpretation. The other one is that Google is cheating.
If antitrust is using a monopoly (earned or not) in one market to create a monopoly in another market (say, as an example, using a monopoly in a desktop OS to create a monopoly in desktop Office suite application) … how exactly is Google cheating?
Has Google somehow added “exculsive-to-Google” features to the web so that one now has to search it with Google (say for example akin to adding one-OS-only extensions to a web browser and embedding it irremovably in a desktop OS)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law#Dominance_and_monopoly
“Competition law does not make merely having a monopoly illegal, but rather abusing the power that a monopoly may confer, for instance through exclusionary practices.”
So … how exactly are Google using exclusionary practices? What exactly does Google offer that one MUST use only Google products to access?
Edited 2011-04-01 00:31 UTC
No, wrong. It’s “trust” behavior. “Antitrust” is any legislation/effort to break up the monopolistic “trust”.
Leveraging one monopoly to create another; a la Microsoft’s use of its OS monopoly to create a monopoly in the market for Web browsers. You do remember that, right? Well, Google is trying to use Search monopoly in Europe to create other monopolies. Get it?
Read the complaint. Or do you need everyone else to do your thinking for you?
Edited 2011-04-01 21:24 UTC
What are these other monopolies? I still don’t understand how Google is the only search that works in Europe (you know, in the same kind of way that ActiveX web applets will only work if a user runs Windows)?
The response doesn’t answer the question, I notice.
I will pose it again: “What exactly does Google offer that one MUST use only Google products to access?”
Strangely enough, reading the complaint doesn’t answer this question either.
Here is yet another interpretation:
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/regulation/2011/03/31/microsoft-vs-goog…
I had to Google who the Visigoths were … they were the Germanic tribe who sacked Rome in 410 AD and hence effictively brought about the downfall of the Roman Empire.
Sounds about right.
So, in your mind, it’s good to have only a single search provider in Europe? I’m just trying to understand the depths of your hypocrisy so, please, enlighten me …
There are many search providers in Europe.
So I’m not sure I understand the question. Exactly who is being excluded from search (either searching, or providing search services) in Europe? How are they being excluded? Is that a particular popular browser will only work with one search engine, or something (similar to the way that some popular desktop applications or formats are only available for one particular desktop OS)? Are there extensions bundled with a near-monopoly OS that will only work with one search engine? Is it that you can only use Google search in Europe, somehow akin the situation in European mass-market retail stores where you can only buy systems with one particular operating system?
Admittedly I am not in Europe, but on my Firefox 4 browser right now when I pull down the icon to the left of the search box, I can select between Google, Bing, Yahoo and Duck Duck Go, and set any of them as the default. Is this not the case in Europe?
Enquiring minds would like to know.
Edited 2011-04-02 13:18 UTC
Wrong. Google has 95% search market share in Europe. So, effectively, there is only one search provider in Europe. A few percentage points doesn’t equate to competition.
The basic problem here is that Google is actively trying to prevent anybody from competing with them in search — either by restrictive contracts, exclusive OEM deals, technology walls, and other sleazy tactics which aren’t based on user choice but what provider they happen to have wired into their machine on first boot. Many/most users don’t know how to change their search engine. Google knows this, so it works with OEMs and software providers to limit choice.
So, again, do you really want a single company to have that much power over an important market like search? It’s really that simple.
Edited 2011-04-04 19:01 UTC
Opposing view to PJ’s … Microsoft didn’t give up …
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=201103311235596…
If this isn’t an example of the Pot calling the Kettle black, I don’t know what is… c.c C.C
Every english teacher/professor ive ever had has told me the propper way is to use two spaces after a period. This contradicts everything I have been told
My respects for those last lines: