Microsoft and Google are openly facing each other amid hacks, competition investigations

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google and Microsoft are at loggerheads.

Partly driven by pressure from lawmakers and regulators on the two technology companies’ extraordinary power over American life, the California search engine giant and the Washington software company are struggling to get under the bus.

Tensions between Microsoft Corp and Google, owned by Alphabet, have been raging for some time, but the rivalry has become unusually public in recent days as the directors of both companies have been put on the defensive in the event of a concurrent crisis.

Google faces bipartisan complaints – and journalistic anger – about its role in avoiding advertising revenue from the media industry, the subject of an antitrust hearing in Congress on Friday.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is facing examination of its role in cyber security breaches.

First, the same alleged Russian hackers who compromised Texas-based software company SolarWinds Corp also took advantage of Microsoft’s cloud software to break into some of the company’s customers. The second, unveiled on March 2, saw Chinese hackers abuse hitherto unknown vulnerabilities to suck up emails from Microsoft customers around the world.

Addressing lawmakers’ antitrust judicial subcommittee to the News House on Friday, Microsoft President Brad Smith was to fire on Google, telling representatives that media organizations are being forced to “use Google’s tools, operate on Google’s advertising exchanges, and contribute data to operations and pay Google money, “according to excerpts from his testimony published by Axios.

Google rejected it, saying that “Microsoft’s new interest in attacking us comes after the SolarWinds attack and at a time when they allowed tens of thousands of customers – including US government agencies, NATO allies, banks, non-profit organizations, telecommunications providers, utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and probably news organizations – to be actively hacked through Microsoft’s major vulnerabilities. ”