Google says Microsoft’s stance on news is an effort to bypass the hack

Microsoft President Brad Smith discussed Google at length in his comments prepared at Friday’s hearing, saying that online news is the food that feeds Google’s search and advertising network, and suggesting ways the search giant could better support the news industry. He expressed his support for legislation that would give news organizations more bargaining power with Facebook and Google.

Other supporters of the project include the News Media Alliance, an industry trade group that includes News Corp,

editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Just before the hearing, Google’s senior vice president for global affairs, Kent Walker, responded in a blog post. He defended Google’s support for journalism, saying it paid publishers for links to their work and accused Microsoft of “blatant corporate opportunism”.

“They are returning to their family guide to attacking rivals and lobbying for regulations that benefit their own interests,” Walker wrote. “They are now making selfish claims and even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undermine a rival.”

Walker said it was “no coincidence” that Microsoft’s attacks on Google came amid ongoing scrutiny of the software giant’s role in two recent hacks.

Microsoft offers a news application and a website that includes content from more than 1,200 publishers. Google, a unit of the alphabet Inc.,

said in October that it was committing $ 1 billion to a new product called Google News Showcase, which will support publishers worldwide.

Walker characterized Microsoft’s story of supporting news as “irregular” and said the rival paid publishers less than Google.

Microsoft declined to comment on Google’s statement. Google declined to comment further.

The dispute was sparked by a global debate over new regulations that would require platforms to pay publishers for links to their news sites. Last month, Australia introduced legislation that would require such payments, generating multi-year licensing agreements between Google and Facebook with content providers like News Corp.

Google threatened to withdraw from Australia because of the legislation.

During his testimony on Friday, Smith described Australian law as reasonable and considered Google’s plans to leave the country as detrimental to the country, its people and publishers. He said he and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella assured the country’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, that they were willing to run Bing with a lower margin than Google because it was important “that we all succeed together. “.

“When companies start threatening countries and say that if their legislators pass laws they don’t like, they will stop and leave, then something seems a little out of place,” said Smith. He added: “No one should be above the law. No person, no government, no company, no technology. ”

Microsoft’s pressure comes as Google defends itself against the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit, opened last fall, claiming it illegally maintained its dominant position as the preeminent web search engine by closing commercial deals to exclude competitors. A trial is not expected until the end of 2023, but regulatory pressure has ignited tensions between technology companies facing new investigations in Washington.

Microsoft and Google have been struggling to find out who would be the guardian of the Internet since the early 2000s, when Internet Explorer began to give way to what was then a search engine startup. While Microsoft dodged an antitrust investigation, Google gained prominence and became the web’s leading browser, email and mobile service provider. Tensions between technology companies increased as competition expanded into new businesses.

Microsoft and Google are competitors and partners in several lines of business. Microsoft’s Bing search engine competes with Google’s most widely used service. Google’s efforts to build its cloud computing division lead the company into more direct competition with Microsoft. But the software company based in Redmond, Wash. It also depends on Google’s Android software on some of its Surface gadgets.

Microsoft has a long history of lobbying Google. Under the command of Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, Microsoft has launched an attack advertising campaign against Google called “Scroogled”, which lasted from 2012 to 2014.

When Nadella took over in 2014, he sought a more peaceful relationship and ended the attacks. The executive in charge of the advertising campaign, Mark Penn, left in 2015. In 2016, Microsoft and Google negotiated a truce and removed the regulatory complaints between them all over the world.

Microsoft generated about $ 7.7 billion in search advertising revenue in its last financial year. Google last year had about $ 104 billion in search-related sales.

Write to Tripp Mickle at [email protected] and Aaron Tilley at [email protected]