Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks (L) and Sundar Pichai of Google.
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Microsoft and Google have boasted about their practices and treatment of news outlets in a battle between past and present antitrust goals.
In his written testimony before a trial before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust Friday, Microsoft President Brad Smith said Google had made journalism dependent on its wide range of services, including analytics and advertising tools. , while benefiting from access to their content. Smith said Google relies on content from these stores to keep its users busy, citing its own experience with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
Smith said referral traffic from Google has real value for news agencies, but “the traffic revenue has become increasingly difficult for news organizations because most of the profits have been squeezed out by Google.” According to Pew Research, he pointed to a sharp decline in newspaper advertising revenue from $ 49.4 billion in 2005 to $ 14.3 billion in 2018. Over the same period, he said, Google’s advertising revenue grew from $ 6.1 billion to $ 116 billion.
“It’s no coincidence,” he said.
Google swung back at Smith in a statement issued before the trial, recalling Microsoft’s period of monopolistic scrutiny two decades ago.
“We respect Microsoft’s success and we compete hard against it in cloud computing, searches, productivity programs, video conferencing, email and many other areas,” Google’s senior vice president of Global Affairs Kent Walker said in a blog post. ‘Unfortunately, as competition intensifies in these areas, they return to their well-known playbook to attack competitors and push for regulations that benefit their own interests. They are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works. in an attempt to undermine a competitor. And their claims about our business and how we work with news publishers are just wrong. ‘
While Google has recently been in the right place when it comes to enforcing antitrust, several federal governments and state attorneys have faced it, but around the turn of the century Microsoft has been the focus of a major antitrust case. The lawsuit, which alleges that Microsoft illegally maintained a monopoly and thinned out competition by connecting its Internet Explorer browser to computers using its operating system, has deepened the current allegations against Google, which also includes alleged anti-competitive contracts. informed.
Walker claims that Microsoft’s evidence dates back to the same period.
“This latest attack is a return to Microsoft’s years of practice,” he wrote. ‘And it’s no coincidence that Microsoft’s newfound interest in attacking us comes on the heels of the SolarWinds attack, and at a time when they have allowed tens of thousands of their customers – including US government agencies, NATO allies , banks, non-profits, telecommunications providers, public utilities, police, fire and rescue services, hospitals and presumably news organizations – to be actively hacked via major Microsoft vulnerabilities. “
Microsoft launched a campaign against Google around 2012, mocking its services with a parody called ‘Scroogled’. The campaign was intended to pinpoint consumers’ unfair practices and instead target Microsoft’s search competitors. Walker said the latest attack is reminiscent of the ‘old distraction’ Scraped playbook. “
The two giants recently filed a similar issue in Australia, which worked on new laws, requiring Facebook and Google to pay news publishers for the link to their content. While the legislation was finally watered down after Facebook approved its promise not to show more news content in the country, it is a warning to tech companies that further changes in other parts of the world could be on the verge.
Although Google never took its news service out of Australia and eventually agreed with publishers. Microsoft has indicated that it is ready to step in if Google removes its news service. The company has said it will be prepared to comply with Australia’s rules if it is subject to it and does not threaten to render its service.
Walker said in a statement on Friday that Google was still committed to working with news organizations and policymakers “to enable a strong future for journalism.”
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