Google and Microsoft may be warring through third parties
Google appears to believe Microsoft is backing small firms suing the search giant as another front on the Google-Bing battle. But Microsoft denies being the controlling force behind the lawsuits.
The disputes began when Google filed a complaint against an Ohio shopping links site named myTriggers.net for unpaid bills. The site responded by suing Google, claiming that as it sells its own advertising, it’s effectively a competitor to Google, and that Google thus acted illegally in raising the ad rates it charged myTriggers.net.
While the case itself seems dubious and somewhat unlikely to succeed, Internet law blogger Eric Goldman has noted that myTriggers hired an international law giant named Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft to handle the case. Not only is that firm — based in New York, Charlotte and Washington, D.C. — hardly the most obvious choice for an Ohio client, but it also seems an expensive hire for a relatively small site.
Curiously the law firm not only carries out antitrust work for Microsoft, but has also handled a lawsuit filed on similar grounds by another small site.
Google hasn’t outright accused Microsoft of involvement in these cases. However, it did tell the Wall Street Journal that “It’s become clear that our competitors are scouring court dockets around the world looking for complaints against Google into which they can inject themselves, learn more about our business practices, and use that information to develop a broader antitrust complaint against us.”
A Google company blog also notes several competion-based complaints involving they way the search engine ranks sites which themselves provided search-based services. It notes that one of the complainants is Microsoft itself (via the Ciao! shopping site), while another is a member of an advertising competitiveness lobbying group part-funded by Microsoft.
Microsoft itself says it neither initiated nor funded the two antitrust suits. It does acknowledge that it frequently hears from small firms claiming to be the victim of anti-competitive behavior by Google.
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