Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks (L) and Sundar Pichai from Google.
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Microsoft and Google have faced the practices and treatment of the news media in a battle between past and present antitrust targets.
In his written testimony for a hearing before the Judicial Subcommittee of the Antitrust Chamber on Friday, Microsoft President Brad Smith said that Google has made journalism stores dependent on its wide range of services, including analytics and advertising tools, taking advantage of at the same time access to their content. Smith said Google relies on the content of these outlets to keep its users involved, citing its own experience with the Microsoft Bing search engine.
Smith said that referral traffic from Google has real value for news media, but “monetizing this traffic has become increasingly difficult for news organizations because most of the profit has been extorted by Google.” He pointed to a sharp drop in newspaper advertising revenue from $ 49.4 billion in 2005 to $ 14.3 billion in 2018, according to Pew Research. Over the same period, he said, Google’s advertising revenue rose from $ 6.1 billion to $ 116 billion.
“This is not a coincidence,” he said.
Google returned to Smith in a pre-hearing statement, returning to Microsoft’s antitrust review period two decades ago.
“We respect Microsoft’s success and compete with them in cloud computing, search, productivity applications, video conferencing, email and many more,” said Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, Kent Walker, in a blog post. “Unfortunately, as competition in these areas intensifies, they return to their familiar playing card to attack rivals and lobby for regulations that benefit their own interests. Now they are making independent claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undermine a rival. And their claims about our business and the way we work with news publishers are simply wrong. “
While Google has recently been at the forefront of antitrust enforcement in the face of several lawsuits from the federal government and state attorneys general, Microsoft has been at the center of an important antitrust lawsuit at the turn of the century. The lawsuit, alleging that Microsoft was illegally maintaining a monopoly and eliminating competition by linking the Internet Explorer browser to computers using its operating system, profoundly informed current allegations against Google, which also involve alleged anti-competitive contracts.
Walker claimed that Microsoft’s testimony dates back to the 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 is in the wake of the SolarWinds attack and at a time when they have allowed tens of thousands of customers – including US government agencies, NATO allies, banks, non-profits , telecommunications providers, public utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and probably news organizations – to be actively hacked through Microsoft’s major vulnerabilities. “
Microsoft infamously launched a campaign against Google around 2012, mocking its services with a parody called “Scroogled”. The campaign was intended to point out alleged unfair practices by consumers to Google and instead direct them to Microsoft’s search competitor. Walker says latest attack is reminiscent of “old diversionist” Stingy playing card. “
The two giants recently faced a similar problem in Australia, which was working on new laws that would require Facebook and Google to pay news publishers to link to their content. Although the legislation was eventually slashed after Facebook fulfilled its promise to stop posting news content in the country, it served as a warning to technology companies that other changes could be imminent in other parts of the world. .
Although Google never extracted its news service from Australia and eventually entered into agreements with publishers. Microsoft has said it is ready to step in if Google eliminates its news service. The company said it would be willing to comply with Australian rules if it was appointed subject to them and would not threaten to retire.
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 US antitrust law works and what it means for Big Tech