Sundar Pichai-led Google has launched a devastating attack on Microsoft, accusing the Satya Nadella-led company of being ready to break the way the open web works in order to undercut a rival.
The attack came when Microsoft President Brad Smith issued a testimony on Friday for the House Committee on the Judiciary, which looked at antitrust and commercial aspects of competing for a free and diverse press, and criticized Google for blocking the growth of news organizations hinder.
“News organizations have ad inventory to sell, but they can no longer sell directly to those who want to run ads,” Smith said in a statement.
“Instead, for all practical purposes, they have to use Google’s tools, work on Google’s ad exchanges, contribute data to the operation of Google, and pay Google money. All of this affects the ability of news companies to profit from it. ” Advertise on their own websites, “noted Smith.
Kent Walker, Google’s head of global affairs, hit back late Friday, saying this latest attack marked a return to Microsoft’s longstanding practices.
“It is no coincidence that Microsoft’s newfound interest in attacking us occurs immediately after the SolarWinds attack and at a time when tens of thousands of their customers have been actively hacked through major Microsoft vulnerabilities,” Walker said in a statement.
“They are making selfish claims now and are even poised to break the workings of the open web to undercut a rival. And their claims about our business and how we work with news publishers are just wrong,” he added.
Google and Microsoft are at odds over whether publishers should have more control over a digital advertising industry dominated by the search engine giant and Facebook.
In January, Google threatened to remove its search engine from Australia in response to the News Media Bargaining Code that would force the company to pay news publishers for their content.
Australia passed the law last month and Microsoft fully supports the law, slamming both Google and Facebook.
Walker said Microsoft is the second largest company in the US, but “their track record is spotty”.
“They paid the news industry a lot less than we did. Given the ability to support or fund their own journalists, Microsoft replaced them with AI bots,” he argued.
“Aside from Microsoft’s distraction, we will continue to work with news organizations and policymakers around the world to create a bright future for journalism.”
On Friday, a hearing of the House Justice Subcommittee focused on the way Google and Facebook spread news, and a new bill introduced earlier this week has already garnered Republican support. It’s one of the greatest legal threats to technology that has emerged from the year-long antitrust debate, and much of its political power comes from the precarious state of local journalism.
“The crisis in American journalism has turned into a real crisis in our democracy and in our civil life,” said Cicilline in his opening address on Friday.
The battle between two tech giants came as the US debated a new bill that was introduced earlier this week that would allow news organizations to join forces with platforms like Facebook and Google to negotiate the terms under which their content would be disseminated online.
