Microsoft and Google are openly arguing amid tricks, competition queries

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google and Microsoft are about to throw knives.

Driven in part by pressure from lawmakers and regulators on the two technology companies’ extraordinary power over American life, the California-based search engine giant and Washington-based software firm are struggling to launch -are each other under the bus.

Tensions between Microsoft Corp and Google, owned by Alphabet, have been simmering for some time, but the rivalry has become unusually public in recent days as executives from both companies have been put on hold. defensive by competent crises.

Google faces bipartisan complaints – and journalistic anger – over its role in eliminating advertising revenue from the media industry, the subject of a congressional antitrust hearing in Congress on Friday.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is facing scrutiny for its role in back-to-back cybersecurity violations.

In the first, the same alleged Russian hackers who pledged software firm Texas SolarWinds Corp also took advantage of Microsoft’s cloud software to break into some of the company’s customers. The second, released on March 2, allegedly saw Chinese hackers abusing unknown vulnerabilities to the point of sucking up emails from Microsoft customers around the world.

Microsoft President Brad Smith had to fire a shot at Google to inform representatives that media organizations are required to “use Google’s tools, operate on Google ad exchanges, contribute data to Google operations and pay money to Google “, according to excerpts from his testimony published by Axios.

Google withdrew and said Microsoft’s “recent interest in attacking us comes after the SolarWinds attack and at a time when they have allowed tens of thousands of its customers, including U.S. government agencies, allies of the “NATO, banks, non-profit organizations, telecommunications providers, utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and, presumably, news organizations, to be actively hacked through Microsoft’s major vulnerabilities.”