Microsoft accuses Google of abusing market power

The war between tech giants and Microsoft and Google opened up on a new and serious front overnight, with Microsoft set to make a formal complaint to the European Union over what it claims are examples of Google abusing 90% share of the European search market.

Google is already under investigation by the European Commission for breaching competition laws , after three small websites – comparison site Foundem, French legal search engine ejustice.fr and shopping site Ciao, which is also owned by Microsoft – claimed their Google search rankings were being artificially lowered.

But Microsoft’s involvement in the case – and its willingness to level a fresh set of claims against Google – is likely to raise the profile of the investigation.

“Google has done much to advance its laudable mission to “organise the world’s information,” but we’re concerned by a broadening pattern of conduct aimed at stopping anyone else from creating a competitive alternative,” Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith said in a blog post overnight.

“Google has 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.”

Central to Microsoft’s filing is examples where it claims Google has restricted access to YouTube video search results, which are becoming increasingly important as the use of video rises.

Smith accuses Google of putting in place a “growing number of technical measures to restrict competing search engines from properly accessing it for their search results” that prevent Microsoft’s Bing search engine from returning search results that include YouTube clips.

Smith also claims Google has blocked Microsoft phones from accessing YouTube metadata in the same way that Google Android and Apple phones can.

“As a result, Microsoft’s YouTube “app” on Windows Phones is basically just a browser displaying YouTube’s mobile website, without the rich functionality offered on competing phones.”

Microsoft also argues that Google’s policy of restricting the access advertisers have to their own data prevents competition in the online ad space.

“Google contractually prohibits advertisers from using their data in an interoperable way with other search advertising platforms, such as Microsoft’s adCenter,” Smith argues.

“This makes it much more costly for Google’s advertisers to run portions of their campaigns with any competitor, and thus less likely that they will do so. If it’s too expensive to port their advertising campaign data to competing advertising platforms, many won’t do it. Competing search engines are left with less relevant ads, and less revenue.”

Microsoft has also added to the claims of the original three websites that launched the investigation, claiming Google is actively discriminating against its rivals by jacking up the price they pay for advertisements or pushing rivals’ pages lower in its rankings.

“We share the concerns expressed by many others that Google discriminates against would-be competitors by making it more costly for them to attain prominent placement for their advertisements. Microsoft has provided the Commission with a considerable body of expert analysis concerning how search engine algorithms work and the competitive significance of promoting or demoting various advertisements.”

Google says it is unsurprised by Mircosoft’s move, given one of its subsidiaries was involved in the original compliant.

“For our part, we continue to discuss the case with the European Commission and we’re happy to explain to anyone how our business works,” Google spokesman Al Verney said.

In a nod to its own Microsoft’s own brushes with European competition regulators in the past, Smith acknowledged that many commentators would see the irony in its filing against Google.

“Having spent more than a decade wearing the shoe on the other foot with the European Commission, the filing of a formal antitrust complaint is not something we take lightly. This is the first time Microsoft Corporation has ever taken this step. More so than most, we recognise the importance of ensuring that competition laws remain balanced and that technology innovation moves forward.”