08.23.10
Microsoft and Yahoo! Continue Losing to Google, Microsoft Resorts to Regulators to Complain About “Monopoly”
Summary: Microsoft whines about Google because it cannot compete, not even with armies of AstroTurfers, fake statistics it pays for, and spurious complaints about Google “monopoly”
Microsoft is a top lobbyist in its area, but the “official” numbers [1, 2] hardly tell the whole story. Associated Press says: “Microsoft Corp. spent $1.85 million in the second quarter to lobby the federal government on software piracy, technology in health care and other issues, according to a disclosure report.”
“Not so long ago we saw Microsoft hiring secretive AstroTurfers in D.C. to shoot down Yahoo’s deal with Google.”Microsoft does not disclose a lot of lobbying and it has unregistered lobbyists (which makes comparative analysis of lobbying budgets highly irrelevant). It’s a subject we covered here many times before. The figures above are just symbolic numbers, intended to give the public an illusion of transparency and thus raise confidence in the government.
Not so long ago we saw Microsoft hiring secretive AstroTurfers in D.C. to shoot down Yahoo’s deal with Google. Right now we see something similar going on in Japan [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft has the nerve to complain to regulators about “monopoly” (in order to do this in Europe Microsoft uses “satellite proxies” as IBM calls them). Here is the latest about that:
Yahoo Inc. is committed to churning out Internet search innovations, including at Yahoo Japan, even after the independent affiliate’s decision to start using a search engine provided by rival Google Inc., a Yahoo executive said Tuesday.
According to Experian Hitwise (one of the few search engine market share assessors which are not paid by Microsoft), Microsoft and Yahoo! (Microsoft proxy) gain nothing on Google.
While Google continued to dominate the U.S. search market in July, Microsoft Bing outpaced the search giant in several verticals, including shopping. Statistically, the shares of the top four search engines for the four weeks ending Aug. 1 were unchanged from the previous four weeks, Experian Hitwise reported Wednesday. Google had a share of 71.43%, Yahoo 14.43%, Bing 9.86% and Ask 2.32%. The remaining 70 search engines accounted for 1.94% of U.S. searches.
Even comScore, which is paid by Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], is finally changing its method to no longer be gamed by Microsoft/Yahoo (and thus both Yahoo and Microsoft take a tumble and descend sharply). It’s well overdue because comScore knew it was being gamed but did nothing about it. It gave ammunition to its partner, Microsoft.
“It will be interesting to see how Microsoft uses Oracle to further cause damage to Google.”As further sign that Microsoft ‘search’ is going nowhere but down while Microsoft loses billions in this area, notice the strategic ‘revamp’/shake-up, which usually indicates that things are not working at present. Whenever Microsoft uses the term “reorganization” it’s just a euphemism that comes up because something went wrong, usually someone quitting (we gave examples of “reorganization” or “reorg” before and then explained the witty use of the term).
“Google Locks Horns With Oracle, Microsoft Watches Gleefully,” says this article about Oracle’s lawsuit [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft uses Oracle to further cause damage to Google. We have already given examples where Microsoft takes advantage of it. █
