For the first time ever, Microsoft has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission – in an effort to create a pathway to facilitate greater competition in the broader search market.
Google may only be estimated to hold about 60-70% search market share in North America, but it is close to 95% in Europe and Microsoft apparently sees an antitrust strategy as the only way to carve out room for its own Bing, which has grown, but remained largely behind expectations in 2010.
In a blog post, general counsel Brad Smith raises concerns that Google’s core search dominance now extends into more areas that prevents other search providers from competing. For example, Google blocks third party search engine access to YouTube, Windows Phone 7 devices can’t “properly” operate with YouTube, and monetized search boxes on websites prevent publishers from offering other search services. With all those Google boxes floating around, there’s no benefit or incentive for users to actually go to another search site. Microsoft also notes Google’s attempt to block access to book content and Google’s decision to keep data that is used by Google Adsense advertisers exclusive to Adsense. Microsoft indicates that this data should be transferrable to other advertising solutions.
In total, Smith used half a dozen examples to explain how Google “impedes” competition in the search market: “Search engines compete to index the Web as fully as possible so they can generate good search results, they compete to gain advertisers (the source of revenue in this business), and they compete to gain distribution of their search boxes through Web sites. Consumers will not benefit from clicking to alternative sites unless all search engines have a fair opportunity to compete in each of these areas.” Smith noted that ” Google should continue to have the freedom to innovate.” However, he states that Google is now restricting “others from innovating and offering competitive alternatives” and Europe needs to “ultimately” step in and stop Google’s behavior.
Google may only be estimated to hold about 60-70% search market share in North America, but it is close to 95% in Europe and Microsoft apparently sees an antitrust strategy as the only way to carve out room for its own Bing, which has grown, but remained largely behind expectations in 2010.
In a blog post, general counsel Brad Smith raises concerns that Google’s core search dominance now extends into more areas that prevents other search providers from competing. For example, Google blocks third party search engine access to YouTube, Windows Phone 7 devices can’t “properly” operate with YouTube, and monetized search boxes on websites prevent publishers from offering other search services. With all those Google boxes floating around, there’s no benefit or incentive for users to actually go to another search site. Microsoft also notes Google’s attempt to block access to book content and Google’s decision to keep data that is used by Google Adsense advertisers exclusive to Adsense. Microsoft indicates that this data should be transferrable to other advertising solutions.
In total, Smith used half a dozen examples to explain how Google “impedes” competition in the search market: “Search engines compete to index the Web as fully as possible so they can generate good search results, they compete to gain advertisers (the source of revenue in this business), and they compete to gain distribution of their search boxes through Web sites. Consumers will not benefit from clicking to alternative sites unless all search engines have a fair opportunity to compete in each of these areas.” Smith noted that ” Google should continue to have the freedom to innovate.” However, he states that Google is now restricting “others from innovating and offering competitive alternatives” and Europe needs to “ultimately” step in and stop Google’s behavior.
Posted by Kurt Bakke in Business on March 31
Courtesy : www.conceivablytech.com
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