Google Joins Europe Case Against Microsoft

February 28, 2009 · by Haavard

Accusing Microsoft of unfairly sidelining competitors, Google said on Tuesday that it would apply to join a European Union antitrust case against Microsoft over the company’s Web browser.

A couple of weeks ago, Mozilla joined as well.

Readers' comments 7

Left under the original article, as archived.

deadHarlequinSaturday, February 28, 2009 11:21:42 PM
Priceless.

The next thing tomorrow for European Union's government idiots will be forcing Google to add results from other engines in their SERPs.

Anyway, I hope until then the MS ninjas will kill all the hypocrites in the IT world.

Btw, promoting Chrome in every page isnt that different from a preinstalled browser, right? Or not? Who knows really?
HaavardSaturday, February 28, 2009 11:42:52 PM
Why would Google be forced to do anything if they did not break the law? If Google breaks the law, I am sure they will have to face the consequences too. Surely you are not suggesting that corporations should be able to break the law without being punished? Or is it just Microsoft which should get a pass and be above the law?

Hypocrites? Let's not forget that Microsoft has logged antitrust complaints as well, even against Google!
deadHarlequinSunday, March 1, 2009 12:29:10 AM
"if they did not break the law"

Of course no one should be able to break the law without consequences, I dont think you would find anyone civilized disagreeing with that. But on the other side, laws, are not God given. New laws and old laws are constantly enacted and abolished in a never ending procedure of "try n error".

So I m obviously criticizing the law itself. That's because I think many times its application is unethical and incorrect, like the time in which they forced a company to ship an operating system without a media player, yet most of the times it's simply incapable of delivering substantial benefits.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84Qt1Sz7ITk).

Thats why I believe this type of laws do much more harm than good.
Charles SchlossMonday, March 2, 2009 5:29:56 AM
If I recall what I read right Google had to release a update to Chrome just for a hotmail fix because the site did not work in Chrome. Safari also has site specific-hacks. (I know this from looking in the developer menu in Safari). Opera is not the only browser that has to do some site fixing. I am not sure abiut FF.
HaavardMonday, March 2, 2009 9:58:01 AM
deadHarlequin: The WMP case was not a failure of the law, but a failure to apply the "punishment" correctly.

Any law can have undesired consequences if not applied correctly. However, antitrust law has been successfully applied time and time again. It continues to be of utmost importance to ensure a free and competitive market.
Khaled KhalilTuesday, March 3, 2009 12:31:39 PM
too late is better than never, for google and mozilla.

Originally posted by deadHarlequin:

Btw, promoting Chrome in every page isnt that different from a preinstalled browser, right? Or not? Who knows really?
i know, since that harm competition, you are right, i see that's not fair nor objective to promote thy products generally as top search result. and i think that shouldn't be legal since Google is the monopolist on the search engine market.
HaavardTuesday, March 3, 2009 2:12:36 PM
I have noticed that there are a lot of Chrome ads on pages that talk about Opera. In my highly unscientific investigation on a non-representative sample of the Web, Opera got Chrome ads frequently, while pages that were talking about Firefox seemed to get them only rarely.

But for now I'm concluding that this is a mere coincidence. And while there's no doubt that Google has a lot of power because of their position in the online advertising market, I don't think it would be in their best interest to have fewer alternative browsers out there at the moment.