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Codebreaker

Microsoft accuses Google of being a monopoly

John Moe Mar 31, 2011

In a related story, Courtney Love accuses Charlie Sheen of being crazy.

Microsoft will file its first ever anti-trust complaint, saying that Google’s practices are anti-competitive. Microsoft is joining an ongoing case against Google in Europe that’s based around the idea that Google has absolutely crushing market share when it comes to search and that it uses that dominance to hide the services of rivals to Google’s own services. The thinking is that Google controls awareness of what is even out there in the world.

The litany of particulars in Microsoft’s complaint, the company’s lawyers say, includes claims of anticompetitive practices by Google in search, online advertising and smartphone software. But a central theme, Microsoft says, is that Google unfairly hinders the ability of search competitors — and Microsoft’s Bing is almost the only one left — from examining and indexing information that Google controls, like its big video service YouTube.

Of course, for many years it was Microsoft being on the receiving end of such complaints as its Windows software became the de facto standard for all personal computers. To everything turn turn turn, there is a season turn turn turn.

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