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Microsoft Gives Up, Says It Can't Win: Files an Antitrust Complaint Against Google

By Pamela Jones et al.

Well, it's official, I take it. Android has won. Google has overturned Microsoft. Microsoft has now waved the white flag and admitted it is an also-ran in search and in mobile, and that it can't win on its own merits without outside help from regulators. That's what I get from its latest move, filing an antitrust complaint against Google with the EU Commission.

You know what I think? I think it means Microsoft still doesn't understand why it got into antitrust hot water, still accepts no responsibility for what happened to the company. I understood that better when I read the Paul Allen excerpt from his book in Vanity Fair. The upper management are portrayed as ethically empty. That would explain why Microsoft now seems to think that all it takes is a competitor to complain, and Google will end up like it did. That leaves out a powerful factor, which is that Microsoft really did abuse its monopoly position and it did harm to the market, to cybersecurity, to customers, to competitors in ways that are disturbing to the rest of us. No one had to use partners and subsidiaries to cook up something to complain about to make it look like it was doing bad things. They really did them, and that is why they ended up in antitrust hot water.

Full post as published by Groklaw on March 31, 2011 (boomark / email).