Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks (L) and Sundar Pichai of Google.
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Microsoft and Google discussed their media practices and treatment in a battle between past and present antitrust targets.
In his written testimony to a hearing before the House Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee on Friday, Microsoft President Brad Smith said that Google has made journalism vehicles dependent on its wide range of services, including analytics and advertising tools, while profiting from access to your content. Smith said that Google relies on the content of these vehicles to keep its users engaged, citing his own experience with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
Smith said that Google’s referral traffic has real value for news outlets, but “monetizing that traffic has become increasingly difficult for news organizations because most of the profit has been squeezed by Google.” He pointed to a sharp decline in newspaper advertising revenue from $ 49.4 billion in 2005 to $ 14.3 billion in 2018, according to Pew Research. In the same period, he said, Google’s ad revenue grew from $ 6.1 billion to $ 116 billion.
“This is not a coincidence,” he said.
Google attacked Smith in a statement released before the hearing, reminiscent of Microsoft’s antitrust scrutiny period two decades ago.
“We respect Microsoft’s success and compete hard with them in cloud computing, research, productivity applications, video conferencing, email and many other areas,” said Kent Walker, senior vice president, Global Affairs, Google. blog post. “Unfortunately, as competition in these areas intensifies, they are returning to their family guide to attacking rivals and lobbying for regulations that benefit their own interests. They are now making self-interest claims and are even willing to break down. of the open web in an effort to undermine a rival. And his claims about our business and how we work with news publishers are just wrong. “
While Google has recently been on the cutting edge when it comes to antitrust enforcement, facing a number of lawsuits from the federal government and state attorney generals, Microsoft was the focus of a historic antitrust lawsuit at the turn of the century. This lawsuit, which claimed that Microsoft had illegally maintained a monopoly and removed competition by linking its Internet Explorer browser to PCs using its operating system, profoundly informed the current allegations against Google, which also involve alleged anti-competitive contracts.
Walker said Microsoft’s testimony dates back to the same period.
“This latest attack marks a return to Microsoft’s longstanding practices,” he wrote. “And it’s no coincidence that Microsoft’s newfound interest in attacking us comes in the wake of the SolarWinds attack and at a time when they allowed tens of thousands of their customers – including government agencies in the U.S., NATO allies, banks, not profits, telecommunications providers, utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and, presumably, news organizations – to be actively hacked through Microsoft’s top vulnerabilities.
Microsoft ran an infamous campaign against Google around 2012, mocking its services with a parody called “Scroogled”. The campaign aimed to point consumers at allegedly unfair Google practices and direct them to Microsoft’s search competitor. Walker said the latest attack was reminiscent of the “old Scroogled teaser book. “
The two giants recently clashed over a similar issue in Australia, which had been working on new laws that would require Facebook and Google to pay news publishers for links to their content. Although the legislation was weakened after Facebook fulfilled its promise to stop showing news content in the country, it served as a warning to technology companies that new changes may be on the verge of other parts of the world.
Although Google never withdrew its news service from Australia and finally closed deals with publishers. Microsoft had signaled that it was ready to intervene if Google removed its news service. The company said it would be willing to play by Australia’s rules if it was designated as subject to them and would not threaten to withdraw its service.
Walker said in a statement on Friday that Google remains committed to working with news organizations and lawmakers “to enable a solid future for journalism”.
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