On Monday, Google asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to allow it to weigh in as an interested party on how Microsoft should change its search engine options in Vista. This was after a previous judge basically told Google to bugger off and leave Microsoft’s antitrust problems to the company and the states overseeing the agreement.
The concerns about the desktop search function arose after Google initially filed a complaint. The pressure rose. State attorney generals said they might investigate the complaint – which could have extended Microsoft’s antitrust woes. Microsoft said it would change the search engine function. This was a sweet maneuver on Microsoft’s part because it seemed to satisfy the antitrust overseers while also leaving Google out of the process.
But Google obviously isn’t happy with that.
In some ways, Google is setting itself up as the bad guy here. Nearly every time a powerful company gains a lot of power it winds up in the regulatory dog-house. Do we want a situation where new competitors can jump in at any time and be considered “interested parties” on an antitrust matter – even years after the settlement from the initial legal battle is reached? If Google’s power keeps on rising, that situation may be more dangerous to it in the long run than fighting it out in the open marketplace with Microsoft over desktop search. A Microsoft lawyer has even suggested that Google is heading for its own anti-trust troubles. That’s a sentiment echoed by some readers of this blog.
See also Google still whining
