Google says Microsoft’s stance on the news is an effort to distract itself from the hack

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

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

editor of The Wall Street Journal.

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

“They’re going back to their familiar book of attacks on rivals and pushing for regulations that benefit their own interests,” Walker wrote. “They are now making self-service claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undermine a rival.”

Walker said it is “no coincidence” that Microsoft’s attacks on Google occurred in a continuous scrutiny of the role of the software giant in two recent hacks.

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

said in October that it was committing $ 1 billion to a new product called the Google News Showcase that will support publishers around the world.

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

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

The dispute was sparked by a worldwide debate over new regulations that would force platforms to pay publishers to link to their news sites. Last month, Australia introduced legislation that would force such payments and sparked multi-year licensing deals between Google and Facebook with content providers such as News Corp.

Google had threatened to withdraw from Australia under the law.

During his testimony Friday, Smith described Australia’s law as reasonable and considered Google’s exit plans to be 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 lawmakers pass laws they don’t like, they will withdraw and leave, then there seems to be something,” Smith said. 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 Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit, filed last fall, alleging that it has illegally maintained its dominant position as the web’s preeminent search engine by concluding trade agreements to exclude competitors. A trial is not expected until the end of 2023, but regulatory pressure has inflamed tensions between technology companies facing new control in Washington.

Microsoft and Google have been arguing over who would be the internet gatekeeper since the early 2000s, when Internet Explorer began to give way to what was then a search engine. As Microsoft advocated antitrust research, Google gained prominence and became the leading browser, email, and mobile service provider on the web. Tensions between technology companies increased as their competition expanded to new businesses.

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

Microsoft has a long history of pressure against Google. Under chief executive Steve Ballmer, Microsoft launched an ad campaign against Google’s attack called “Scroogled,” which ran from 2012 to 2014.

When Nadella took over in 2014, she sought a more peaceful relationship and ended the attacks. The executive responsible for the advertising campaign, Mark Penn, left in 2015. In 2016, Microsoft and Google negotiated a truce and withdrew their regulatory complaints from each other globally.

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

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