The European Union’s decision to take on Google last week stems from official complaints by 19 companies in Europe and the United States, including Microsoft and a number of small firms, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
Microsoft is actually twice on the list; first as Microsoft-proper, but also as part of a lobby group also on the list. There’s also a complaint from a party who remains anonymous.
I believe five of the smaller companies were suspiciously formed about a year ago. All of them have ex-Microsoft employees as their CEO and their source of funding is not public. These companies were created with businesses optimized to factor into the EU complaints. All of them have filed formal complaints.
This comes from other stories I have read about the action.
You just have to wonder why someone would go out and start a brand new company exactly positioned to maximize the negative impact of Google on its business.
I would love to see actual references for that. It sounds both plausible, but also as something a Google fan might just imagine.
Yet given the current monopoly scenario, they have all the rights to complain and enforce proper competition.
After all, they were (rightfully) subjected to the same treatment a few years ago for the Windows+IE case, and the same rules must (should!) apply to everybody… Including Big G.
Microsoft seems to concede that Bing is inferior, anyway. They tried to sell it to Facebook a few years ago, implying it’s something they didn’t particularly consider valuable and wanted to be rid of.