1st May, 2006

When Good Companies Go Bad

I love Google, but this is just pathetic:

Google has informally complained to U.S. and European antitrust regulators about what it says are biased settings on Microsoft’s latest Web browser, marking the latest spat between two companies whose business models are increasingly bumping up against one another.

Google’s charge, isn’t true, as you can see in my screenshot.  My IE7 is set to Google by default becuase IE6 was, and even if it wasn’t, the change is very easy to make.
GoogleScreen.png
However, even if it were true, it’s fully within Microsoft’s right, and in fact might be expected by their shareholders to favor their own search engine over Google.  By complaining to a regulatory agency, Google is basically claiming that Microsoft doesn’t have a right to pitch its own products before others.  And this is coming from the dominant search engine on the market!
Meanwhile, the Firefox browser is set to Google’s browser by default, and does not even have MSN Search as an option. In exchange the Mozilla corporation makes millions from Google searches.  MSN search is also notably absent from Google Desktop and other Google applications.

Posted by: David

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A big difference is that IE 7 is bundled with an os that has a monopoly share of the market. There are many applications written for that os, so it is hard to switch to another os.

oth, Google products are opt-in. In fact, most of them are free, so you don’t even have the initial cost to give you a vested interest in making it work. If you stop liking Google search, you can switch tomorrow.

Something more comparable would be if ms sold or gave away products in a market that it didn’t have a monopoly in and then made msn search the default but that isn’t the case here.

By: Dave UNITED STATES Linux Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.2 on May 2nd, 2006
at 10:33 pm

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