Redmond gets involved in EU anti-trust case against web search giant Google.
Microsoft spent nearly a decade being probed and prodded by the European Union for anti-competitive practices, so one is entitled to raise an eyebrow at Microsoft's filing of a formal complaint with the European Commission, as part of the EC's ongoing investigation into Google's Search practices within the EU.
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Can't technically resolve your own problems? Sue.
Can't compete in search engine market share? Sue.
Filing lawsuit after lawsuit because another company is using your business practices against you and killing your own monopoly? Priceless.
well, you guys beat me to say it... they are just complaining about the same things they do. usually they want others to license for the use of anything, even if it is their own finger to push on a button... now they don't even consider licensing, they just want the competing company to be taken down... well have a cup of your own chocolate...
X_x
Probably the best article I've read on afterdawn. Fanboy it up all you want, Microsoft has valid arguments here. Although its nice witness the irony in all of this.
How many of these comments are google plants, worried stockholders or just plain blind sheep? What do they stand to gain? From Azuran we hear the validity of neutrality and moderation. No monopoly of any kind should be tolerated. That is neither an American nor a European principal. It is a principal evolved by modern Democracy ... which is still facing it's greatest and longest lived adversary: Business based Totalitarianism.
If information from one venue would shed light on the practices, procedures and how algorithms work in another local, then this is desirable information. If a witness is in a position to provide and explain technical testimony (that can be corroborated) to laypersons, then this is a valid witness regardless of their past sins.
On a more personal note, there was a choice of search engines ten years ago. Alta Vista was better for image searches. Ask Jeeves used it's own engine and gave it's own independent answers. Remember Exite? Remember WebCrawler? Remember alltheweb? How many dozens of others were "acquired" and then closed down? Or had their independently designed algorithms and engines quietly trashed and replaced? Or had competing features removed? How many of those "lost others" would have provided fresh, different or more relative and less sponsored results? Now I have to click "next-page" three of four times to get past the results imposed by clever algorithms that produce results that pre-favor certain websites and restrict other website results ... and only then if I can manage to avoid the mouse-overs, the popups, the bandwidth-sucking moving-ads, the un-removable control-based sidebars and every other irritating, bloody little trick that can be pushed in my face or pitched at me. And when the hell did the word google replace the word search? It's not like Clorox or Xerox entering the vocabulary by way of consumer identification. Those two companies didn't buy and destroy the competing companies. ... like the two companies (bing being by no means excluded) mentioned in this article. ...like what we are supposed to accept as normal business behavior.
Why are google and microsoft (et al.) allowed to acquire and then kill competition? For the same, easier to see, reason that costco was allowed "merge" with priceclub. ... because anti-trust enforcement & permissions favor the stock value and not the price competition and the product selection choice that benefits the consumer. And what kind of "lobbying" might be involved that so favors the carnivorous and turns the consumer into prey? Business and democratic values should be able to coexist. Greed is not good. "We the people..." is good. Don't loose site of the fact that it is OUR bloody money and we should have a fair choice on how to spend it. But we let this go on ... why? We are not a stupid people. We started democracy. But we ARE stupid consumers. We apathetically let ourselves be tread on by another aristocracy.
The Monopolistic Beast was not destroyed by the anti-trust legislation of the last century. They have somehow "acquired" (as assets) the regulatory agencies, the "lobbied" legislatures and the judicial systems of all lands and the beast has come back with an un-natural(ly) selected vengeance. It represents the greatest threat to democracy since aristocratic rule. Anti-trust laws and fair trade regulations, the agencies and legislation involved and their enforcement by the courts is not supposed to be for the benefit of the stockholders and corporate management. ...it's supposed to be about the consumer ... the people.
The predatory corporations in this article are only representative of the far greater collective of business-world-norm tyranny. It doesn't matter that such corporations give equal rights to women in the workplace or provide ramps for the handicapped. Contrary to their slick PR department releases, they are, have and ever shall seek to consume the consumer. World without end. Consumer rights and democratic ideals face an extinction born of the industrial revolution and evolved into a great killing machine. I believe that democracy and business can coexist. But Corporanus-Rex must be slain.
I believe that there is a higher level of capitalism possible than now exists. Maybe if it were given a name, then it would be possible to define it and to strive to attain it. ...but, above all, the people should decide, not the predators.
