Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks (L) and Sundar Pichai of Google.
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Microsoft and Google defended their practices and news treatment in a battle between antitrust goals of the past and the present.
In his written testimony for a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust Friday, Microsoft President Brad Smith said Google has made the media dependent on its wide range of services, including analysis and advertising tools, taking advantage of access to its content. Smith said Google relies on the content of these outlets to keep its users engaged, citing its own experience with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
Smith said Google’s referral traffic has real value to the media, but “monetizing that traffic has become increasingly difficult for news organizations because Google has reaped most of the benefits.” According to Pew Research, he noted a sharp decline in newspaper advertising revenue, which went from $ 49.4 billion in 2005 to $ 14.3 billion in 2018. During the same period, he said, Google’s advertising revenue grew by $ 6.1 billion to $ 116 billion.
“This is no coincidence,” he said.
Google turned to Smith again in a statement released before the hearing, and recalled Microsoft’s antitrust scrutiny period two decades ago.
“We respect Microsoft’s success and compete fiercely with them in cloud computing, search, productivity applications, video conferencing, email, and many other areas,” said Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google. “Unfortunately, as competition in these areas intensifies, they return to their well-known book of games to attack rivals and push for regulations that benefit their own interests. They now make self-service claims and are even willing to breaking the way the open web works in an effort to minimize a rival. And their claims about our business and how we work with news publishers are wrong. “
While Google has recently been ranked first in antitrust law enforcement, facing several lawsuits from the federal government and state attorneys general, Microsoft was the focus of an antitrust lawsuit. of reference at the beginning of the century. This lawsuit, which claimed that Microsoft was illegally maintaining a monopoly and eliminating competition by linking the Internet Explorer browser to computers that used its operating system, has deeply reported the current allegations against Google, which also involve alleged anti-competitive contracts.
Walker claimed that Microsoft’s testimony dates back to that same period.
“This latest attack marks a return to Microsoft’s long-standing practices,” he wrote. “And it’s no coincidence that Microsoft’s new interest in attacking us comes after the SolarWinds attack and at a time when they’ve allowed tens of thousands of customers, including U.S. government agencies, NATO allies, banks , profits, telecommunications providers, utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and, presumably, news organizations: being actively hacked through Microsoft’s major vulnerabilities. “
Microsoft made an infamous campaign against Google around 2012, mocking its services with a parody called “Scroogled”. The campaign was intended to point out consumers to allegedly unfair practices by Google and target them at Microsoft’s search competitor. Walker said the latest attack was reminiscent of the “old diversionist.” Scroogled playbook “.
The two most recent giants faced a similar issue in Australia, which had been working on new laws that would force Facebook and Google to pay news publishers to link to their content. While the legislation was eventually slashed after Facebook kept its promise to stop showing news content in the country, it has served as a warning to tech companies that there would be more changes alongside other parts of the world. world.
Although Google never took its news service out of Australia and eventually reached agreements with publishers. Microsoft had indicated that it was prepared to intervene if Google removed its news service. The company said it would be willing to comply with Australian rules if it was designated subject to them and would not threaten to withdraw its service.
Walker said in a statement Friday that Google remains committed to working with news organizations and policymakers “to enable a strong future for journalism.”
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SEE: How U.S. antitrust law works and what it means for Big Tech