Image: © Wlodzimierz/Stock.adobe.com
Google will be launching a new ‘astroturf’ group this week to ‘discredit Microsoft,’ the company lawyer alleges.
In a fiery blog post on Monday (28 October), Microsoft deputy general counsel Rima Alaily accused Google of orchestrating “shadow campaigns” against its competitor to discredit the company with regulators.
In the blog post, Alaily alleged that Google is launching a new “astroturf group” – an orchestrated lobbying campaign – this week to “discredit Microsoft with competition authorities and policymakers and mislead the public”. The lawyer further alleged that Google has gone to “great lengths” to hide its involvement with the group, even hiring European cloud providers to act as the “public face” of the group.
However, Alaily says that one of the companies Google approached but failed to involve in the alleged campaign told Microsoft that the campaign will be “directed and largely funded by Google” to attack Microsoft’s cloud computing business in the EU and the UK.
Alaily also accused Google of trying to use the non-profit Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) against it. According to a Bloomberg report, Google offered CISPE $500m to “derail” its antitrust settlement with Microsoft, which was reached in July of this year.
CISPE initially filed a complaint against Microsoft in 2022 for conducting anticompetitive practices and using its market dominance to direct customers to its Azure cloud infrastructure. “Under a Memorandum of Understanding signed by both parties, Microsoft has committed to make certain changes to address the claims made by European CISPE members and, as a result, CISPE will withdraw its complaint against Microsoft,” the settlement stated.
Alaily also accused Google of directly and indirectly funding industry commentators and academics to discredit Microsoft.
“It seems Google has two ultimate goals in its astroturfing efforts,” said Alaily, “distract from the intense regulatory scrutiny Google is facing around the world by discrediting Microsoft and tilt the regulatory landscape in favour of its cloud services rather than competing on the merits.”
In September, Google filed its own antitrust complaint against Microsoft, accusing the company of leveraging Windows Server dominance to drive customers to Azure. Alaily described it as “unusual” that Google announced its complaint when most such complaints are submitted confidentially.
“We hope Google does not prevail in misleading competition authorities,” Alaily said.
Google is facing serious scrutiny over alleged anticompetitive practices. Last month, it lost its appeal against a €2.4bn antitrust fine in the EU. And the US Department of Justice has said that it may propose that Google should be forced to divest from some of its biggest businesses in order to address the company’s illegal monopoly on internet browsing.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has its own probes into its practices. Just last week, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Microsoft-owned LinkedIn Ireland €310m after an inquiry into the company’s data processing practices.
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
