Google's search methods under scrutiny by Microsoft for alleged misconduct
Microsoft's deputy general counsel, David Heiner, has published a blog post accusing Google of failing to address anti-competition concerns relating to its web search business. Heiner's post, published on a company blog, alleges that Windows Phone users do not have the same access to YouTube as Android and Apple customers.
According to Heiner, senior executives at Google told YouTube personnel not to enable a first-class YouTube experience on Windows Phones. This decision, he claims, was made by Google itself and is being criticized as depriving consumers on competing platforms of a comparable experience in accessing content on the Web.
Heiner's blog post suggests that Google's actions may be anti-competitive in nature, and he points to Microsoft's past engagement with YouTube personnel over the past two years as evidence of an effort to remedy this problem for consumers.
The allegations concern Google's failure to make full search functionality available on the Microsoft Windows Phone version of its YouTube video streaming app. This issue is also at the heart of the European Commission's (EC) ongoing anti-trust investigation into Google's practices.
The EC is reportedly seeking more substantial changes than the FTC in Google's search practices. The issue at hand in the EC's anti-trust investigation is whether Google is preventing Windows Phone users from having a full YouTube experience.
Google's search practices are currently under investigation by both the European Commission (EC) and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The company is also being accused of inconsistency in insisting that other competing services, such as Facebook, should offer it complete access to their content for indexing and inclusion on its search site, while refusing to do the same for Windows Phone users.
Many commenters on Heiner's post found it ironic for Microsoft to be complaining about anti-competitive business practices, given its past history of facing similar accusations in the early 2000s. In the past, Microsoft faced accusations about keeping details of application programming interfaces (APIs) for its Windows operating system secret in order to make its Internet Explorer browser work better.
However, Heiner's blog post suggests that Microsoft is committed to ensuring a fair and competitive market for all consumers. The company has been working diligently to remedy issues with Google's YouTube access on Windows Phone, and it hopes that Google will take similar steps to ensure that all consumers have equal access to online content.
