Microsoft and Google feuding amid hacks, competition inquiries

WASHINGTON • Google and Microsoft are at knives drawn.

Driven in part by pressure from lawmakers and regulators over the extraordinary power the two technology companies wield over American life, the California-based search engine giant and Washington-based software firm are wrestling to throw each other under the bus.

Tensions between Microsoft and Alphabet-owned Google have been simmering for a while but the rivalry has become unusually public in recent days as executives from both firms have been put on the defensive over competing crises.

Google faces bipartisan complaints - and journalistic ire - over its role in gutting the media industry's advertisement revenue, the subject of a Congressional anti-trust hearing on Friday.

Microsoft, meanwhile, faces scrutiny over its role in back-to-back cyber security breaches.

In the first, the same allegedly Russian hackers who compromised the Texas software firm SolarWinds also took advantage of Microsoft's cloud software to access the records of some of the company's clients.

The second breach, disclosed on March 2, saw allegedly Chinese hackers abuse previously unknown vulnerabilities to vacuum up e-mails from Microsoft customers around the world.

Microsoft president Brad Smith, in a letter to a congressional subcommittee hearing, blamed Google's business model for "devouring" ad revenue on which news groups rely. "News today is part of the technology ecosystem, and all of us who participate in this ecosystem have both an opportunity and responsibility to help journalism flourish," he said.

He lauded the role that news organisations play in defending democracy and contended that the "Internet gutted the already ailing local news business by devouring advertising revenue and luring away paid subscribers."

Microsoft has lobbied for other countries to follow Australia's lead in calling for news outlets to be paid for stories published online, a move opposed by Facebook and Google.

Google's senior vice-president of global affairs Kent Walker fired back in the blog post, saying of Microsoft: "They are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open Web works in an effort to undercut a rival."

He added: "This important debate should be about the substance of the issue and not derailed by naked corporate opportunism."

Backers of Google and Facebook have claimed that mandatory payments for news links would fundamentally change the way the Internet works and ultimately be detrimental to free online services.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE