Timing of Microsoft's attack on Google questioned by digital expert
Under fire search engine Google is facing allegations of anti-competitive behaviour, but is the timing by the company behind the allegaltions, Microsoft, questionable?
Girdwood spoke to The Drum following news that Google may face investigations by the European Commission following complaints from companies about its behaviour when handling the search results of competitors, while three of its executives have also been convicted of breaching privacy laws.
Complaints have been made by Microsoft’s Ciao, price comparison site Foundem and French legal search engine fr about the company and the fairness of its search engine rankings as well as the company’s standard terms and conditions, all of which have been defended by Google.
Julia Holtz, senior competition lawyer for Google has said that she is “confident” that the company is working within European competition law.
Foundem has complained that Google had “the ability to arbitrarily penalise rivals and systematically favour its own services", while Microsoft initially approached the German competition authority over its terms and conditions, although that case has now been transferred to Brussels.
Girdwood said that he believed that the competition case was something that Google would likely win, but that it was something that brand would not be happy about explaining its operations in public. He also said that he believed that the timing of the news would benefit the launch of Microsoft Bing – Microsoft’s competitors to Google.

“The timing here is interesting with Microsoft Bing, which is out in the US and UK, and has expanded across mainland Europe,” explained Girdwood. “A year ago, Microsoft didn’t have a real challenger to Google, so if Microsoft can shake off a small percentage of Google users by making this a public interest case around anti-competitive behaviour – it will benefit. Google will spend a lot of time and resources defending itself in the EU. The timing works well for Microsoft.”
Meanwhile, three executives at the company have been convicted by a court in Italy of breaching privacy laws after a video was posted on the Google owned video sharing site Youtube of a teenager suffering from Down's syndrome and who was being bullied by four other boys, at a Turin school.
It was claimed that the company took too long to remove the video.
The three executives found guilty of violating privacy were David Carl Drummond, former Google Italy and now senior vice president, George De Los Reyes, a retired financial executive and privacy director Peter Fleischer.
They have been given six month suspended sentences but were cleared of defamation.
A fourth executive Arvind Desikan, Google video Europe was cleared of all charges.